Black Country Noir

by Kerry Hadley-Pryce

A couple of years ago, a good friend of mine – another writer –  came to visit from Manchester. She’d been to Birmingham before, and thought she’d therefore ‘been to the Black Country’, but by the time she left for home, she knew for certain that the two places are not the same. It all started when we decided to go for a drink, and, walking down the road, someone called over to us. What they said was, ‘How am ya, m’wenches?’ My friend, only making out the word ‘wenches’ visibly fizzled with offence. ‘Do you know them?’ she asked. ‘No,’ I said. There was a moment of slight discomfort. I had to explain that here in the Black Country, ‘wenches’ is a term of endearment, and strangers will ask after your well-being, often very loudly. What did she learn during her stay? That the Black Country is unsettling, weird, a bit dark round the edges. 

 Of course, I knew this all along. I am, after all, a Black Country wench, born and bred. I know that It’s a place of contradictions: it has its own set of dialects, its own specific culture. You can’t define it geographically, it’s more about the landscape, really. It’s neither entirely urban or rural, in fact, it’s considered borderless. Working farms sit next to housing estates, canals are plentiful and highly significant, historically and culturally. On patches of land near industrial estates and high-rise blocks, you’ll find horses. They seem owner-less, and we used to ride them about the place when I was a kid. But it’s a place that breeds creativity: Elihu Burritt called it ‘Black by day and red by night’ in 1862; Queen Victoria thought the place so revolting, she couldn’t bear to look as she passed through, and in the early 1900s, Edwin Butler Bayliss’ paintings conveyed the smoke and grime of the place. More recently, photographers like the late Phil Loach, and Richard Billingham have created projects of their life in the region. Laura Pannack’s photography (2019) focusing on ‘The Cracker’, a scrubland in Tipton described as ‘a kind of youth club without walls, or rules’ is a fascinating documentary style project that aptly sums up the essence of the Black Country.

So let’s talk about the ‘essence’ of Black Country: poets Liz Berry, Billy Spakemon and R. M. Francis focus on their love of the place. And novelists, from Francis Brett Young in early 1900s, to Anthony Cartwright now, have cultivated a real ‘sensation of place’ in their writing. But the late Joel Lane’s novel From Blue to Black (2000) made me realise the impact of drawing out the weirdness, the eeriness – the vital sense of contradiction of the Black Country – in writing. This, and my own lived experience of the place, and of the fictive possibilities it offers continues to inspire and challenge me as a writer. I say ‘challenge’ because what is now referred to as ‘Black Country noir’ is an unusual mix of crime, thriller, Gothic, dark, weird fiction. It’s a genre that reflects the complexity and contradictory nature of the place itself, the essence of it. And look, let me be clear, writing it is pure joy – the process of writing it, I mean – for me. I’ve written four Black Country noir novels now, and Lie of the Land is the latest one. There’s a sense of the gothic about it, some elements of crime and thriller. It’s weird, (unsurprisingly) dark round the edges with several moments of slight discomfort. Maybe, if you read it, you’ll find it unsettling. Good. Welcome to the Black Country.

Kerry Hadley-Pryce lives and writes in the Black Country, UK. She has a PhD in creative writing and teaches creative and professional writing at the University of Wolverhampton. She co-edited Writing Under Fire: Poetry and Prose from Ukraine & the Black Country, and has short stories published in Best British Short Stories 2023, Takahe Magazine, Fictive Dream and The Incubator. She has had three novels published by Salt Publishing: The Black Country, Gamble, and God’s Country. Lie of the Land is her fourth novel.