Crime author AA Dhand: Life and death on Bradford's 'forgotten' streets
AA Dhand sits at a table in the balcony cafe at Bradford's magnificent old Wool Exchange and points to the spot where his latest victim was found.
"That idea came to me when I was doing the Girl Zero book launch," Amit Dhand says, referring to his 2017 thriller. It was launched in the same building, which now houses surely the most beautiful branch of Waterstones in the country. Dhand's fictional detective Hardeep Virdee - known as Harry - had to answer those questions. The title City of Sinners - the third Harry Virdee book - offers a fair idea of how the Yorkshire city is portrayed.The ornate Wool Exchange, built in 1867, is a symbol of the prosperity Bradford enjoyed as the global centre of the wool trade in the 19th and early 20th Centuries.
But at the time he was writing, he says was angry at how the city had been treated, not least after a substantial part of the centre was flattened for a promised regeneration project that then stalled for years after the recession."When I put that line in about the cesspit of Yorkshire, it was because I felt angry that the city had just been forgotten," he says."It had been left.
The reputation may not be helped by crime thrillers that paint a picture of its mean streets. But Dhand says his books, which tackle racial and religious tensions, child grooming and terrorism, can't try to please anyone but his readers.
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