A A Dhand is sure that after his success, many other British Asians will also turn to crime – crime fiction that is.
He is the Bradford boy who has adapted his own novel, City of Sinners, into the six-part BBC crime drama, Virdee.
The drama is named after its eponymous hero, Detective Chief Inspector Hardeep Virdee, a clean-shaven Sikh who prefers to be addressed as “Harry”.
Unlike Agatha Christie, who acquired her knowledge of poisons after working in a pharmacy, Dhand learnt about crime growing up in council property near Holme Wood in Bradford, “the largest council estate in Europe”.
Virdee made his first appearance in a prequel, Darkness Rising, but this was a short story aimed at those with literacy problems. Streets of Darkness came out in 2016 after years of rejection slips, and was followed by Girl Zero in 2017, City of Sinners in 2018 and One Way Out in 2019. Dhand had written a standalone novel, The Blood Divide, not featuring Virdee, before any of the others but this was not published until 2021 when he had acquired a certain amount of fame.
In television, the author invariably hands over the book to a scriptwriter but not in this case. Dhand has written the script himself – for all six episodes – to make sure no one messes with his novel or gets the cultural references wrong.
The credits state that Virdee was “Created and written by A A Dhand”; is “Based on City of Sinners by A A Dhand”; and Dhand is also its executive producer, along with Paul Trijbits.
The first initial in his name is for “Amit”, the second he keeps to himself.
There are differences between the novel and the TV drama: “I’ve adapted it quite heavily. I have moved away from the novel because I saw that the story could be developed in a more interesting way. That’s why it’s called an adaptation, because you have to take the core elements of the book, which I have done, but when it comes to visual storytelling, you have to adapt it to get the best out of that world.
“In the book, it’s Harry and his brother, Ronnie (involved in crime). But on TV, we have his brother-in-law, Riaz, so I made a big decision there.”
Dhand says: “I prefer script writing – I have always been a script writer who became a novelist. I am a visual writer.”
He is off to India shortly because he is adapting The Blood Divide for television. The story is set in both Britain and India.
“I have also got a new novel coming out, called The Chemist,” he reveals. “It has a character called Idris Khan.”
Unlike DCI Harry Virdee, “Idris Khan is not a policeman but a pharmacist.”
Dhand, who studied pharmacy at Bradford University, ran his own pharmacy in the city until he sold the business just over 18 months ago to become a full time writer. Alongside running a pharmacy, he began writing crime fiction in 2006. After 1.1m words, for which he did not earn a penny, and “66 rejections”, his first Virdee novel, Streets of Darkness, was published in 2016. City of Sinners, set in Bradford like all the novels featuring Virdee, was nominated in Eastern Eye’s Arts, Culture and Theatre Awards ((ACTA) in the literature category in 2019. This year’s ACTA has introduced a new category for crime.
Dhand approves, pointing out that “crime is the best-selling genre in fiction”.
“I was brought up on Enid Blyton as a very young boy,” he says. “Then I went to short horror books. They were for teenagers but I was addicted by their darkness. I read Stephen King exclusively from the age of 12. I read classics like Christine by Stephen King – I must have read that 20 times. I think that’s the biggest book he’s written. I do tend to read more crime fiction than anything else. Stephen King and Thomas Harris (author of a series of suspense novels about Hannibal Lecter) are my biggest influences.”
He is close friends with two of the best known British Asian crime writers – Abir Mukherjee and Vaseem Khan, who both happen to be ACTA winners. Vaseem is also chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association, which was set up 70 years ago but has never before had a non-white person occupying the top post.
Dhand says that “unlike Abir and Vaseem, whose novels are set in India, mine are set in Britain. I write commercial fiction.”
He mentions other Asian writers who have turned to crime in Britain. “The late Amer Anwar passed away recently. Very sad.”
His novel, Brothers in Blood, won the “Debut Dagger” from the Crime Writers’ Association. Dhand also refers to Kia Abdullah, who was longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award for Next of Kin.
Another name Dhand throws up is Ajay Chowdhury, whose “warm, funny and spicy crime thrillers feature Kamil, an ex-Kolkata detective turned Brick Lane waiter”.
“There are definitely six to 10 of us writing in this arena,” remarks Dhand.
“I was recently on stage at a young writers’ event,” he goes on.
His advice was: “Write what you love and love what you do – that’s really the only way to do it. Nobody paid me to write for 10 years. I wrote because I loved it. I write because I’m unable not to write. It’s my passion, it’s my hobby, it’s my addiction.”
There was no literary tradition in his family. “My dad came over when he was 12, worked in factories and he’s been here ever since. My mother, who was from Punjab came when she was 23. I was born in Watford and moved to Bradford when I was two. I grew up in a cornershop where my parents got up at 6 in the morning.”
His mother’s death from Covid was “absolutely devastating. She was only 66.”
“She was on a ventilator, and they said, ‘We’re going to take off your ventilator and you’ll be able to speak for maybe 10 seconds before we take you away. They took her mask off. She looked at me and my twin sister and said, ‘Don’t take my ashes to Haridwar, it’s not safe for you.’ And then the mask went back on again. Her one sentence was not, ‘I love you.’ That we knew. Her only thought was for our safety. After she passed away, that once sentence stuck with me. I thought I have to deliver the series. I have to honour the hard work she did for me.”
He took a few days off last year while the BBC was filming Virdee on location in Bradford to take his mother’s ashes to India.
