The Mean Streets of History
Dr Luke Deckard reveals more about his new work of historical fiction set in 1920's Britain.
Storytelling has served as a history book of sorts since the beginning. From the earliest myths and legends to popular TV shows, films, and books, it explores humanity’s duality—the tensions between good and evil, outside and insider, heroics and villainy. We tell stories to look back at past actions (far and recent) and sociopolitical tensions and, as a society, in theory, learn from our mistakes. Biopics, which are often more fiction than fact, are a unique example of how quickly we explore recent history through storytelling with films like The Big Short (2015) and Bombshell (2019) or miniseries like This England (2022). Historical Fiction’s unique M.O. is to recreate the past, explore new and exciting facets of history, and shed light on unknown areas lest we forget our failures and missteps.
When I began writing my debut, BAD BLOOD, for my PhD in 2017, I knew I wanted the novel to be two things: historical and noir. I wanted to explore a historical moment and play with a tried and tested form, the hard-boiled/noir novel.
Historically, I situated the novel in 1922 Edinburgh. The early 1920s was a tumultuous time in Britain. The scars of war could be seen everywhere. A number of vets were homeless. Over 200,000 men suffered from ‘shell-shock’, many of whom went undiagnosed. Joblessness was out of control. Blue-collar workers were underpaid. Immigrant workers were taken advantage of. At the same time, the Bright Young Things were up and coming. Women were finally allowed to vote. Victorian values were being sidelined, and sexual liberation was taking place. However, oppression, racism, and classism remained an ongoing problem.
This was the world hard-boiled fiction first responded to when it emerged in the early 20’s in America. Hard-boiled fiction vs its British cousin, Golden Age, what is today Cosy Crime, was always more socially aware, even despite the over-the-top toughness of writers like Carroll John Daly and Micky Spillane. Raymond Chandler said in his essay The Simple Art of Murder (1950), that Golden Age Fiction was contrived and operated on silly clockwork mechanisms for murder. Hard-boiled fiction took the readers down mean streets where “Murder is (committed) for reasons, not just to provide a corpse…Crime is not just a problem to be solved, but a reflection of society’s flaws.” Margaret Atwood described Historical fiction as a form that investigates “truth and lies, disguises and revelations… crime and punishment… sin and retribution and even redemption.” Hard-boiled and Historical fiction have that in common—they aim to say something about the world we live (or lived) in.
BAD BLOOD leads you down the mean historical streets of 1920s Edinburgh. Weaved through a noir romp, where you’ll find crooks on every corner, femme fatales, gangsters lurking in the shadows, everyone harbouring dangerous secrets, and where one wrong move might get you killed, I knew BAD BLOOD needed to say something about the era it was set. The story sheds light on very real struggles and tensions between citizens and immigrants in Scotland at the time, as the woman Logan Bishop is tasked to find is a Lithuanian immigrant. Not unlike today, immigrants weren’t seen as equals in society or in the workplace. Many were paid less than Scots who did the same job as them, their names were anglicised, and their culture was mocked. The world of BAD BLOOD is a hostile and dangerous one. But also an authentic one.
The combo of historical fiction and hard-boiled is a powerful thing. In many ways, it strips the gloss and removes the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia. One only needs to read The Devil in A Blue Dress (1990) by Walter Mosley or March Violets by Philip Kerr (1989) to understand what I mean. Or, cinematically, see films like Chinatown (1974) and L. A. Confidential (1997). Historical Hard-boiled Fiction confronts the readers with shocking and brutal truths and packs thrilling punch after punch and exciting intrigue.
You can get your copy of Bad Blood by Luke Deckard.
Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3z58kIW
Read Bad Blood and other great tiles on Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/4bawbUT
Great read, especially as a new writer myself. Thankyou