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This Dark Water
March 1915.
The Great War has raged for seven months.
No one believes it will last much longer—not old Skipper Williams of the Hull trawler the Kestrel, and not Captain Joseph Krieger of the German U-boat the SM U-19.
Williams is far too old to be at sea. The Admiralty has requisitioned most of the fishing fleet, and any able-bodied man has joined up for the war effort, so the skipper is left with a misfit crew. The Humber Steam Trawling Company has offered him a lot of money to fill his fishroom, and that’s what he’ll do—to hell with this war.
The SM U-19 has just enough fuel to get back to base at Wilhelmshaven. They’ve hammered the diesel engines and sent five enemy vessels to the bottom of the sea already. Krieger and his men have been crammed inside the U-boat for nearly a month. They’re homesick, filthy, and hungry, but they can’t go home yet—not with one torpedo left to fire.
Lockwood
Gaz Lockwood is a tough kid, but he's not cocky like other bouncers. He looks after people. Way back, he tried to look after his mam before she ended up in a box, and they put him in care. Our Dave gets him to drive sometimes because the lad can handle himself and he knows how to keep his mouth shut.
With Leatherhead on holiday, things are changing. There's a Bransholme gang shifting weed and whatnot all over the city on mopeds, and a Leeds firm are trying it on with Our Dave.
Gaz has got into the wrong business for a young fella like him. It's protection. He’s looking after a working girl because the firm know they can trust him, and then use him as well.
Kate works at the library on Chants Ave. She doesn't look old enough, but back in the day it was a bottle of sherry every afternoon before the pub. She's doing a master’s in counselling these days. She's been through enough to know a few things.
You wouldn't put them together. Not in a million years.
Not unless you were Our Dave.
Faceman: A Hull gangland coming of age story
In 1988, Tom’s grandfather drove his silver XJ6 Jaguar off the Hessle Road flyover at eighty with Tom in the passenger seat. Unlike the old man, six-year-old Tom survived but the burns were extreme. It took him six months to get out of hospital. At school, the kids pointed and called him Roadmap, Face, Waxman, Pretty Boy and lots more.
Tom teaches law at the University. He gets plastered most nights. His pretty, pixie haired wife is sleeping with her chiropractor. Tom is overweight. He is ashamed of the way he looks and what he has become. He talks to the ghost of his dead father who lives in the shed at the bottom of the garden even though he makes the words up himself.
When Our Dave from across the road asks him to help with a legal matter, Tom steps into a world where the lines between right and wrong blur. He learns that Our Dave has lost someone he loves, and he knows that someone is trying to kill the man too.
Well, what can Tom do about it?
He can hardly look after himself.
Like the ghost of Tom’s father says, he’s made a cock up of being Tom Williams so far.
He’s going to be someone else, someone better.
He’s going to become Face.
Nik the Swift
The East Riding of Yorkshire 1744.
Highwaymen still roam the coach roads. There’s the smell of civil war brewing in the north.
Richie Turpin has one last errand to run before he goes to the gallows, again.
There's a kidnapped Beverley lass called Nicola Sullivan. All he has to do is rescue her, but it's not that simple, for Nicola’s mother is someone he knew twenty years ago - someone he loved.
Nik is more than just a spoiled rich girl - she has heart. If Richie can get her home to Beverley, she means to kill a man who deserves a bullet - her father.
Avenue Cars
Our Dave has been running Avenue Cars on Chanterlands Ave, Hull, for as long as anyone remembers. You can depend on Our Dave, but it wasn’t always like that.
Back in the seventies he did things he isn’t proud of, and buried under the shed on his allomtment behind Newland Ave, is a shotgun.
There are dark forces in this city. Leatherhead controls the heavy drugs that come through Hessle Road. The Mancs are trying to muscle their way in, and then you’ve got the bent coppers.
If Our Dave is to keep his drivers safe, he’ll have to go back to his old ways.
It’ll be murder
Richie Lad
North Burton.
The East Riding of Yorkshire.
Summer 1722.
When seventeen-year-old village lad, Richie Jackson, stops a midnight coach robbery, they make him constable of the peace.
He’s not constable material.
An illegitimate son to that dead Turpin woman. Six foot four with a big, daft hunting dog.
Nana says they only gave him a gun so he’ll get shot.
After he saves the Pike lass, it looks like he might end up being a highwayman himself.
That highwayman.
THE GREAT FROST
The East Riding of Yorkshire 1709.
The tiny village of North Burton. It’s March.
In years to come they will call it The Great Frost.
Meg and Nana know the cold will get worse – because everything always does. Meg’s husband is away at war, the roof is about to fall in and Carrick, the big rector up at St Michael’s, says the cold is a punishment for their sins.
When a wounded highwayman bangs on their door in the night, and they take him in, they don’t realise just how much worse it will get.
A North Sea Tale
Hull 1975.
The Cod Wars rage.
If Skipper Richard Bird doesn't catch enough fish this time, he'll never sail another trawler out of St Andrew's Dock again.
Even with the new deckie learner, Danny, he's four crew down already. There's a lot to deal with out in the North Sea. Gutting for sixteen hours straight, the freezing cold water in your wellies, the waves as big as houses crashing over the bow and the narrow eyes of the rough Hessle Road lads. When Danny finds the dead body of the bosun in the wheelhouse, he knows there's something terrible on board.
A killer.
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BEAST
July 12 2021
Like his dad used to, Tony fights out of the City of Hull Boxing Club.
Now the old man is dead, everyone says they’re here for him. Everyone. Emma from next door. Jacko at the boxing club. The Congolese woman from the flats. The Scouser who’s taken over the gym, but it’s all talk. Tony knows he’s on his own. That’s just how it is.
There’s something dark in the forest behind the North Hull Estate and along the banks of the city drain. Something big. A beast. It’s drawn to him. He’s drawn to it.
Just like everything else, Tony will face it alone.
'A gritty, clever and gripping tale about grief, courage and determination to thrive against the odds'
'A genuine page-turner, finished it the day after I bought it, full of subtle drama and humour. 5/5 '
'Thoroughly enjoyed the rich characters and interwoven threads of the 'Beast', the boxing club and the fight for independence. They combined to make a tale that was hard to put down with an explosive conclusion.