Crime and the City: Birmingham, Alabama ‹ CrimeReads

As Crime and the city has already had the other Birmingham – you know the one in the English Midlands, full of Peaky Blinders, warm beer, the famous “Curry Miles” and with more kilometers of canals than Venice – it seems only fair to tackle the other – Birmingham, Alabama. Although I'm not sure the two Birminghams really have much in common – Alabama isn't known for its canals or its Balti curries. I once visited Birmingham in America and there is no bullring (as the city center is called), no canal boats and no Aston Villa Football Club. Very different cities… But perhaps united in crime fiction (although there are many, many more guns in Alabama).

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Low-level leg-breaker Kincaid from Birmingham, Alabama, has a gun. Inside local author (and Birmingham sportswriter) Bobby Matthews' noir love story Magic City Blues (2023) he is supposed to protect Abby Doyle, the daughter of the most dangerous gang boss in the city. But when Abby's fiancé is found murdered, Kincaid is forced to team up with Birmingham Police Department (BPD) Detective Laura D'Agostino to find the killer and protect Abby at all costs… even from her own gangster father. This is a great introduction to Birmingham – at least its back alleys, tiny clubs and bars. By the way, Magic City Blues is published by the awesomely named Shotgun Honey, a US small press with a focus on rural noir, grit lit and the everyman protagonist – check it out if that's your subgenre of choice.

Cheryl A Heads The ruin of time is also a great stroll through the streets of Birmingham – but this time in 1929. This is Birmingham in its supposed heyday, when it was known as the “Magic City” because of its booming steel industry. However, the city did not welcome everyone equally. With his beautiful, fair-skinned wife and fancy car, Robert begins to fear that he might attract the wrong kind of attention in his new hometown. He is. Then go to Detroit and Meghan McKenzie in 2019 Detroit Free Press grew up with family stories about her great-grandfather's murder – but no one knows what really happened back then. Determined to find answers to her family's long-buried tragedy, Meghan travels to Birmingham. Apparently the book is inspired by true events. Cheryl A Head is also the author of the Detroit-set Charlie Mack Motown mysteries.

Waights Taylor Jr. was born in segregated Birmingham and writes about that terrible era in his Joe McGrath and Sam Rucker series Kiss of salvation (2014). White BPD homicide detective Joe McGrath teams up with Sam Rucker, the city's only black private detective, to solve a series of multiple murders of black sex workers dating back to 1947. Their task is not made any easier by Joe's boss, the racist police chief Big Bob Watson. Joe McGrath and Sam Rucker return Touch of redemption (2016). The year is 1948 in segregated Alabama, and Joe, a white man, and Sam, a black man, face numerous obstacles in their attempt to find the murderers of Joe's father 25 years ago. The pair face corrupt judges and law enforcement officials, as well as a secret brotherhood of men determined to maintain the Southern way of life and “the operation,” their illegal liquor business. And finally, let’s jump forward to 1963 Be aware of the apocalypse (2017), although Joe and Sam are still there when the Freedom Marchers arrive in Birmingham.

Of course, if you need more noir, there's that too Alabama Noir (2020) in the amazing Akashic series with stories by Ace Atkins, Tom Franklin, Anita Miller Garner, Suzanne Hudson, Kirk Curnutt, Wendy Reed, Carolyn Haines, Anthony Grooms, Michelle Richmond, Winston Groom, Ravi Howard, Thom Gossom Jr. , Brad Watson, Daniel Wallace, D. Winston Brown and Marlin Barton. The book's blurb says it all: “We see desperate behavior on the banks of the Tennessee River, in the neighborhoods of Birmingham, in the affluent suburbs of Mobile, in a cemetery in Montgomery, and even on the deceptively beautiful beaches of the Gulf of Mexico.” .' What more could you want?

Now to change course. There are many successful cozy series set way down in old Alabama. You might like “The” by Erika Chase Ashton Corners Books Club Mysteries, which follows Lizzie Turner, an elementary school reading specialist in a small Alabama town, and her group of friends in the Ashton Corners Mystery Readers and Cheese Straws Society. Or the mystery series “The Biscuit Bowl Food Truck” by JJ Cook, which follows Zoe and her classic Southern food truck through Alabama, where she serves out fried biscuit bowls and solves murders, or the series by GP Gardener with Professor Cleo Mack, who decides , take early retirement and move to Harbor Village. a retirement community on the coast of Alabama where seniors always die a little earlier. I'm adding Susan Wittig Albert's historical crime series “Darling Dahlias,” set in a small town called Darling, Alabama, during the Great Depression, in which the ladies of the local garden club band together to solve murders as well. So many – but they don’t play in Birmingham.

And finally, the late Alabama poet Anne George wrote about Birmingham in her cozy eight books, the Southern Sisters Mystery series. George's main character, Patricia Anne Hollowell, is a good-natured, retired teacher who lived in Birmingham, Alabama – and occasionally solves a murder. The books – and most fans of the genre seem to agree on this Murder shoots the bull (1999) is the best (you don't actually have to read them in any particular order) and typical of the style George uses – a narrator of the most southern ladylike singing style – think Janet Evanovich in the South. The last part of the series – Murder boogies with Elvis (2001) – also has to be one of the best crime titles of all time. The series won a coveted Agatha Award.

So no curry, no Peaky B's or bodies in Victorian canals, but Birmingham across the pond certainly has plenty of crime to write about.