Natalie Marlow is a working-class writer who was born and still lives in the West Midlands. After completing her MA in Crime Writing at the UEA, she began her PhD at Birkbeck College, University of London. Natalie was inspired to write Needless Alley by her great grandmother, who was one of thirteen children and lived and worked on the Birmingham canals.
Praise for Needless Alley
“Transplanting the hardboiled Hollywood noir of the 1940s to the backstreets of 1933 Birmingham, [Needless Alley] has all the seamy glitter and cynical grime of the genre.”
– Daily Mail
“A great sense of period and place…creates an atmosphere of mounting menace and dread.”
– The Times
On the hunt for exhilarating new crime fiction reads this autumn? Enter the Noirwich + The Crime Vault book bundle giveaway competition!
Read more ⟶We were honoured to welcome the award-winning Soviet-Ukrainian American and French novelist and artist Yelena Moskovich for the annual Noirwich lecture 2022. Read a transcript of their lecture here.
Read more ⟶UEA MA Crime Writing Graduate Helen Marsden reviews our 2022 event 'Murder Most Modern' with Scarlett Brade and Bella Mackie.
Read more ⟶UEA MA Crime Writing Graduate Helen Marsden reviews the Noirwich Lecture 2022, delivered by Yelena Moskovich.
Read more ⟶The Crime Vault
Waterstones
National Centre for Writing