Waterstones Birmingham is delighted to welcome Andy Griffee, an ‘exciting new voice in the world of crime fiction’ whose debut novel Canal Pushers was published last month. The book is based on the canals and towpaths of Birmingham and its surrounding countryside.

Andy, who was head of the BBC in Birmingham for 9 years, will be in conversation with one of the city’s leading movers and shakers, Anita Bhalla OBE.

Canal Pushers is inspired by ongoing speculation that a real-life serial killer may be stalking the canals of Manchester and sending young men to their deaths. Many drownings in the city remain unexplained and the new thriller transfers the action onto the canals of Birmingham, Warwickshire and Worcestershire.

The sociopathic killer in Canal Pushers masquerades as a fisherman and ends up stalking the book’s main character, divorced and penniless journalist Jack Johnson and the mysterious young woman who joins him on his boat, Jumping Jack Flash. The hunt for the couple is joined by the national media and an organised drug gang and it becomes an exciting page-turning chase which one reviewer compared to John Buchan’s classic, The Thirty-Nine Steps.

The second book in the series is called River Rats and will be published this November by Orphans Press of Leominster. It follows Jack and Nina to Bath where they tangle with unscrupulous property developers who wage a campaign of violent intimidation against a small community of boat dwellers.

Andy and Anita will also be discussing wider issues including the impact of the internet on journalism and publishing as well as crime fiction in general and its peak in popularity in the UK in the wake of the Brexit referendum!

Andy spent 25 years at the BBC as a journalist and senior manager and was responsible for the controversial decision to sell Pebble Mill and transfer the BBC’s activities to the Mailbox.

Anita is currently Chair of Performances Birmingham PLC (Town Hall and Symphony Hall) and Chair of Creative City Partnerships. She is also a Governor of the RSC, Trustee of the Children’s University and a Council Member of Warwick University. She is a former High Sheriff for the West Midlands and was awarded an OBE in 2009 for her services to Broadcasting and Communities.

Please join us at Waterstones for an entertaining and thought provoking discussion.

Tickets for this event are £3.