My novel Right to Kill began with a chance encounter. It was in Cleckheaton, the West Yorkshire town where I grew up. About nine in the evening, and I was walking back down towards the centre from the library, a route I’d taken countless times when I was a kid. And there, under a disused railway bridge, was a young guy selling drugs. He was just going about his business, nonchalant, a bit of arrogance in his eyes as I walked past. I don’t know why I was so shocked. It’s as easy to get drugs in Yorkshire’s old mill towns as a bag of chips.
The drug culture is pretty much endemic these days, and it’s not even particularly well hidden anymore. Yet there’s a whole world of depravity lying beneath it, a semi-submerged part of modern life that leaves squalor, addiction and victims in its wake. So I asked myself, what would happen if someone just killed him? What if someone took offence at his presence, the assumed normality of him standing there, unchallenged, cocky, and decided to do something about it, on the spur of the moment?
I think the truth is that the murder of a low-level drug pusher isn’t likely to have much of an emotional impact on us at all. It’s not like the tragic death of a child, or the murder of an innocent victim of crime. Probably wouldn’t even warrant a headline in the Yorkshire Post. And that’s what attracted me to the idea. Do we see all human life as equally valuable, every murder as equally worthy of our compassion? No, I don’t think we do. You’d need a special kind of copper to see the deep human tragedy in a death like this.
Cue Joe Romano, a half-Sicilian police detective based in Leeds. Joe is tasked with finding out who killed this small-time drug dealer. The murder seems to have been spontaneous, unusual in its mode of violence, and lacks an obvious motive. Joe’s colleagues show little interest in the case, and many members of the public in fact applaud the killer. But Joe believes that every life matters, especially after he gets to know the victim’s mother. When he’s joined by the bolshie, foul-mouthed DS Rita Hridi Scannon-Aktar from Batley, the investigation takes on a new dimension. Especially when the victim appears to have had links to a group of far-right, racist vigilantes.
What I found fascinating about setting a novel in Leeds and the mill towns of West Yorkshire was how the atmosphere of these towns has changed over the last decade or so. When I grew up here, the area was standard ‘north’, part of Labour’s red wall. But recently it also saw a huge pro-Brexit vote, and it was where Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered, apparently in the name of ‘English nationalism’. The red wall is crumbling, and there’s a tension, an undercurrent of racism, a sense of things having lost focus. Just the kind of context in which a vigilante killer might receive popular support. And when a second victim is discovered, Joe Romano has a tough job convincing anybody that justice needs to be done.
My family are all from Leeds. I wanted to write a novel set in the city, not least because I really love the place, its elegance and self-assuredness, Lewis’s, Harvey Nicks, the lions outside the Town Hall… There’s a nineteenth-century grandeur and charm to the city centre: big but not boastful. However, as I wrote Right to Kill I was drawn to the mill towns to the south, Cleckheaton, Batley, Dewsbury… Joe Romano is from Leeds, a real city boy. Although the murders take place just a dozen miles away, it’s as if he's taking the reader with him out of the city to somewhere less familiar.
The second book in the series, To the Grave, also explores these contrasts, moving from the Porsche-spattered, millionaire-infested greenbelt of leafy northern Leeds, to the shadowy world of illegal workers in the run-down and sometimes grim mill towns nearby. Rugby league rather than Premiership football.
In the end, I think that’s what I find most enjoyable about West Yorkshire as a setting for crime fiction. It’s the variety, the quick-fire contrasts, the sense that everything is happening in close proximity to everything else. You can go from pockets of idyllic greenery to noir-ish abandoned factories in a matter of minutes. Plus, there’s the people. Friendly but not flamboyant, with an understated wit. Writing about the north makes for great dialogue. Although, since southerners are also allowed to read it, we had to tone down the accents a bit, tha’ knows.
John Barlow’s RIGHT TO KILL is published in paperback on 4th February, 2022, by HQ/HarperCollins.
On a Thursday night in February, DS Joe Romano finds himself back on home turf in Wortley, West Leeds. He's following up on the disappearance of drug dealer Craig Shaw. It's the start of a case that could make or break Romano's career. Because Shaw is about to go from missing to murdered. While some don't think Shaw's killer should be brought to justice, Romano believes every life counts. But he's running out of time. The killer is ready to strike again. And Romano will be forced to question whether anyone has the right to kill.
When DS Joe Romano first meets Ana Dobrescu she's nervous, in serious danger, and clearly needs help. The next time Romano sees her, she's dead. There was nothing more he could have done, but that's cold comfort for Romano. He's determined to catch Ana's killer. Although the prime suspect, her millionaire boyfriend, is in a coma. With the help of his larger-than-life partner Rita Scannon-Aktar, Romano begins to piece together a puzzle that places Ana at the centre of something much bigger than they could have imagined. But while they're hunting a murderer, those higher up are more concerned about the money. So it's up to Romano to get justice for Ana. And whatever she knew, he'll just have to pray that she didn't take her secrets to the grave.
More information about John Barlow can be found on his website. You can also follow him on Twitter @John_Barlow_LS9 and on Facebook
