Trevor Wood, Quercus

2012. Jimmy is a Falkland’s War veteran who, while serving in the navy, suffered significant psychological damage. His wife has left him, he’s estranged from his daughter and he’s living rough on the streets of his hometown of Newcastle. One night his sleep on the Quayside is disturbed by an altercation. He can’t quite see what is going on but it sounds heated. He then hears a splash. Has someone just been murdered and thrown into the Tyne? He doesn’t intervene, because doing so in the past has caused him no end of trouble, but when he sees an appeal from a young woman, who claims that her father has gone missing, he reconsiders his stance. The incident may be significant but the police don’t want to know, so, he takes matters into his own hands. In his noir-ish debut novel Trevor Wood eschews florid descriptive passages in order to keep the pace moving as Jimmy is pulled – Get Carter like – into the murkier corners of the city. He may be down, but he’s definitely not out.