Gallows Humour and Grit: A Q&A with Garry Stanley, Author of Hiding in Plain White

In Hiding in Plain White, debut novelist Garry Stanley plunges readers into the snow-flecked streets of 1970s Newcastle, where housing estates creak under moral ambiguity, the pubs stink of stale beer, and gangsters in trilbies still hold court. With dialogue as sharp as a cut glass and characters caught between survival and self-destruction, the novel explores vulnerability, masculinity, and criminal compromise in a world teetering on the edge of decay.

Grounded in working-class realism and elevated by dry, gallows humour, Stanley’s literary crime debut is part noir, part social critique - a novel where even the vagrants have something profound to say, and nothing is ever quite black or white.

We caught up with Garry to talk grit, grief, and the power of a well-placed trilby.

Hiding in Plain White is as much about morality and masculinity as it is about crime. What inspired this mix of grit and conscience?

Good grief! Start with a hard question, why don’t you!

It seems to me that morality is linked heavily with crime. As morality drops, surely crime is more likely, and it was interesting for me to portray George’s story through his conscience, which nagged at him throughout. Masculinity is different now compared to how it was in the seventies. Looking back at masculinity nowadays is like looking back through the wrong end of a telescope. It’s a speck on the horizon, and we are now encouraged to show our true feelings and talk more. In the 1970s, when the story is set, men especially were expected to show grit and ‘get on with it’, no matter how bad things got. It can often be funnier and more dramatic for characters to fall from their lofty perch if they are trying to be something they’re clearly not – hopefully! I guess the reader will decide. However, it seems to be no coincidence that the stronger characters in the book all appear to be female – funny that, eh? 

The Northern setting is so vivid - the streets, the pubs, even the shop windows feel alive. What role does Newcastle play in your storytelling?

It could have been set in any Northern city really. The suburb of Newcastle is totally fictional. It’s just that Newcastle is way up in the north to most people, and if the main character, George, needed to run away to hide down south, I guess Newcastle was north enough to run from. I’ve always been fascinated by the gangland culture in the big cities, especially in the 60s and 70s. I’ve read many books and watched many films on the subject. Several of the higher-profile gangland murders around this time still remain a mystery and were never officially solved, even though it was often perfectly clear to most people what had happened – or was it? This seemed like the perfect place for my book to start.

George Brown is a fascinating figure, a ‘respectable’ man dragged into chaos. How did you approach writing his slow unravelling?

I was the respectable side (hopefully) of George Brown for many years – a mild-mannered accountant! A small minority of people operating in the world of law and finance are tempted by the ‘shadier side’. I hasten to add that unlike George, I never was! But – for the people who are – it appears to become an addiction, and they don’t seem to be able to stop themselves. I saw it happen several times. So, I challenged myself to imagine how I would have unravelled had I ever been tempted. Given all the inner turmoil, the soul searching and the sense of letting people down, it may have been similar to George. That’s why I was never tempted! I wouldn’t have wanted Inspector Pickle and his sidekick Lilley knocking at my door, spoiling my apple crumble and custard!

The humour in the book is dry, often bleak, but very effective. How important is that Northern wit to the tone of the story?

I didn’t really think of it as Northern wit, just British wit. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but I suppose being a North Lincolnshire lad, it was inevitable that the humour in the book may have an inherently northern slant.

This book feels deeply cinematic. Was that deliberate, and do you think the story could one day make it to screen?

I’m told I write with a strong leaning towards dialogue and script. I love creating the banter between the characters, and I suppose as I write, I am imagining them in a film scene. Do I think it could make it to the screen? Well, why not! I can dream, can’t I? If you’d told me three years ago that my book would be in print, I’d have thought that you’d maybe had a glass too many. So, who knows?

The title Hiding in Plain White suggests themes of humour. What does it mean to you in the context of the book?

The title was in my mind from very early in the process. I hope the play on words projects a sense of tongue-in-cheek but at the same time hints at what the story is about. There are some references in the book drawn from my many years associated with the often-crazy happenings around Barton Town Cricket Club, but there are also parts that are noir and bleak, admittedly. However, generally that is very much to set up the contrast further down the line. I hope anyone who reads it (and perhaps there are some chapters it might be as well to read it after a couple of glasses of wine!) comes away with a feel-good feeling, rather than a sad one! Well-placed humour is extremely important, and I genuinely have no idea how miserable people get through life. I couldn’t.

Did any writers, films, or shows help shape your voice or the noir atmosphere of this novel?

Far too many to mention, but I was brought up on the classic sitcoms of the seventies and eighties. Dad’s Army, Porridge, The Good Life, Open All Hours and loads more… My wife, Lorraine, shakes her head at how I can sit and watch them today and still be in streams of tears when I’ve seen them twenty times before. In good comedy, the line and the timing of the straight man or woman must be spot on, and in these shows it’s usually brilliant, and I think often much funnier than the punchline itself.

I’ve also been an avid book reader since an early age, starting with devouring all the Enid Blyton Famous Five books in three weeks, when I was nine. (I was off school with chickenpox!) Latterly my tastes have been Mick Herron’s Slow Horses books, which are fantastic. What a writer! Should one of my paragraphs be compared to his, I will die a happy man!

This book digs into working-class life without romanticising it. Was that realism important to you from the start?

Certainly. All I know is the working-class life. My dad was a lorry driver and my mum a dinner lady. You can’t get much more working class than that. The book is set in the 1970s, and the descriptions of the houses, cars, pubs, etc., are very much as I remember them as a kid. Not very romantic, is it! But that’s how it was from a kid’s eye. If people are looking for ‘romantic’, they’ve stumbled across the wrong book, I fear.

What’s something readers might not expect about you - outside the world of crime fiction?

My crazy hobby is that I sing and play the ukulele in a small band of like-minded guys (of a certain age!) who just enjoy it. Although very amateur, occasionally we make a decent sound when you’d nearly recognise the song! I defy anyone who watches and listens to a uke band not to laugh or at least raise a titter, especially when watching a big bloke like me play what looks like a miniature guitar. Never mind what it sounds like – it just looks stupid.

Where can readers follow your journey or connect with you online?

At present, through my publishers, but watch this space!