Books set in Hull can be as gritty as any Nordic noir. So why the snobbery?

Novelist David Mark was told by a London bookstore his Hull-set crime tales were 'too Northern'. Here he explains why he hopes attitudes to 2017's City of Culture are changing

Hull is the only city on Earth where I have pulled my car over to take a picture of a skyline so exquisite I was willing to risk death to stare at it.

The lights of the city flickered like the embers of a dying fire; a necklace of gold weaving through the harp strings of the great bridge that stitches Yorkshire to Lincolnshire. The Humber estuary reflected back a fiery sun and a shotgun-blast of crows and seagulls whirled above of the distant rooftops of the great Victorian buildings. The masts of the pleasure craft that bobbed in the marina disappeared into a purple sky; stirred by a breeze redolent with the mixed scents of sea-spray, crushed fruit and diesel oil.

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