A Book at Christmas www.a63revisited.com Reviewed by Tim Roux

About eighteen months ago I decided to look around and see who else was writing books in the Hull and East Riding region, much encouraged by discovering the work of Hull crime fiction and gangster authors Nick Quantrill and Danny Birch. I thought that there would only be a few of us knocking about, veritable prophets on our own shifting mud banks, but Nick Quantrill and Rich Sutherland (then at Waterstones) soon put me right.

The reality is that Hull and the East Riding is packed full of excellent and fascinating writers and poets. If you fancy a bit of shopping locally for Christmas presents, here are a few highlights.

For a start there are the many contributors to thisisUll.com, several of them poets, some of the most active of whom are Mike Watts, Joe Hakim, Steve Rudd, Michelle Dee, Darren Sant, Rich Mills, Lee Cassanell, Patrick Henry, Nick Quantrill and Steven Hall.

As far as I know, only the latter two are formally published so you will just have to pick up a wealth of free stuff from thisisUll.com for the rest.

Mind you, Steven Hall is published and how! His uber-modernist, self-conscious, cinematically referential oeuvre about troubles with a conceptual shark - The Raw Shark Texts - was glitteringly launched to rave reviews in the national newspapers and is now being turned into a film starring Tilda Swinton.

At the other end of the literary archipelago sits Valerie Wood, Hull's most prolific (and probably bestselling) author who started out by winning the Catherine Cookson Award for The Hungry Tide (available from Amazon UK for £0.01) and whose latest works are Rich Girl, Poor Girl (just out in hardback) and The Long Walk Home. Valerie's genre is classic, historical, well-written, rags-to-riches 'trouble at mill' romantic literature.

Then you have the Hornsea set. Yes, there is something in the air out there which freezes their bones and seems to make them laugh too. Avril Field-Taylor has a mystery thriller Dearly Ransomed Soul and now a Sherlock Holmes revival, Murder At Oakwood Grange, whereas Karen Wolfe follows Granny Beamish's comic tussle with evil in her Seers series.

Another prolific Hornsea writer is Simon and Schuster published, Annie Wilkinson who writes historical tales based around the fictional Wilde family living in Northumberland.

Still in Hornsea (the literary traffic is rather congested), there is Linda Acaster's new woo-woo novel Torc of Moonlight, Stuart Aken fresh with some sexy legs for the cover of his 1970s social slice of life Breaking Faith, and the intriguing Like False Money from Penny Grubb (which will unfortunately not be available until February 2010)

Back to real life and Hull, you have the very wonderful Daphne Glazer with her gentle prose and harsh (drug-fuelled, prison) facts. I really liked Goodbye, Hessle Road and thought her By The Tide Of The Humber even better. If you are into short stories, there is also The Wardrobe. On a wackier note, Rich Sutherland says that Peter Jones' The Legends Of Yawnia piss-take are meant to be very funny. I love the title of The Lying Bitch and Her Wardrobe but I haven't got further than that yet. And on a Rich Sutherland and lovers of short stories note, Rich releases his The Unitary Authority Of Ersatz any time now and the RadgePacket series features excellent brief tales from Hull's Nick Quantrill in volumes 1 & 3 and from Nick Boldock in 1.

Then let us not forget that Hull author with the improbably Hull name Dorothea Desforges (spelt differently every time I see it), with her account of being whisked off to Canada from the back streets of Hull during the war without even being told where she was going until she got to Southampton and of subsequent wild times in Hull (I am kidding, right?) after she just as shockingly and suddenly returned.

Who else? Well there is the much-acclaimed prize-winning crime novelist and short story writer Nick Quantrill.

Nick's first paperback Broken Dreams is not due out until March 2010, but you can read many of his stories for free on his website at Hull Crime Fiction. Then there is Danny Birch's big selling racily-written Hull gangster novel Clipped, and two legal novels by Hull barrister Paul Genney, the wittily world-weary Pleading Guilty and Sentence Adjourned (due out in April 2010) - a touch of the Rumpoles there.

I would also strongly recommend Clive Ashman's enthralling Mosaic about the East Riding in the 4th and 19th centuries, the legendary Tom Courtney autobiography Dear Tom, and Andrew Motion's autobiography In The Blood. Also from Hull University (Andrew Motion was there for four years), Simon Kerr's The Rainbow Singer about the Troubles in Ireland is meant to be excellent.

Having staggered through this long list, you are probably feeling like an explorer yourself and, if so, here are a couple - Karl Bushby who is walking around the world in Giant Steps and James Marr who asks Why Do Goats Climb Trees?. In poetry, you absolutely cannot go wrong with The Slab anthologies, editing by Peter Knaggs.

They are varied, funny, moving and fabulous and the best-compiled series of poetry I have ever come across. I would also strongly recommend Peter Knaggs in Half A Pint Of Tristram Shandy and Cowboy Hat. Of the other poets, a new kid with her head on the block is Holly Roach with her powerfully unrequited Plans To Change And Other Fables. Of the older Philip Larkin brigade there is Tony Flynn's compelling anthology The Mermaid's Chair, and Ian Parks fresh The Cage.

And what about you, Tim, you ask - have you got anything Hull for us? Well, thank you for asking and yes, I have. My Hull gangster novel The Dance of the Pheasodile is still going the rounds. I have another book about a Hull singer-songwriter, written around 19 Joe Solo songs called (Just like) El Cid's Bloomers which is available in e-book now (including the Joe Solo songs) and coming out in paperback in February.

And I have a third book coming out in February called Missio which is a supernatural tale about a boy whose dad drowns when he goes down with the Hull trawler, The Gaul. Just so as you know ...

Reviews, Books - The Mermaid Chair by Tony Flynn Reviewed by Tim Roux
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	A Rockman Music production, this grand old celebration of the glamourous life and times of Country legend Dolly Parton pulls out all the stops to entertain. Even on the opening night of its debut UK tour, the show drew a huge crowd of Dolly fans who were in the mood for singing and clapping along to all her best-known hits. Read more...

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