For the eighth episode of the Working Class Library, the globally bestselling author Lee Child joins hosts Richard Benson and Claire Malcolm to talk about Dreda Say Mitchell’s groundbreaking 2004 novel Running Hot.

Running Hot was not conceived as a crime novel, but it established Mitchell as a significant voice in contemporary urban crime fiction. Set in pre-gentrification Hackney in east London, the novel’s story centres on Elijah “Schoolboy” Ray Campbell, a petty criminal and former jailbird desperate to leave his past behind and start a fresh life as a chef in Devon. His dreams of escape are derailed when he finds a mobile phone near a dead body in the street, and his subsequent adventures take us into the dark heart of contemporary London.

In 2005, the novel was awarded the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger for best first-time crime novel, making Mitchell the first Black British author to win the prestigious honour.

“Having grown up on an estate and seen some of the most intelligent men I knew end up treading the path of crime,” she said, she wanted to “figure out how I ended up at university and becoming a teacher while many of the young men I grew up with had ended up in prison”.

However, she also “wanted the novel to have a certain type of ending because I was tired of reading stories or watching TV where the Black character ends up dead by the end”.

Ultimately, her goal was simply to tell something of what life was like growing up in working-class east London because “very often I feel that working-class lives are not explored; we don’t really want to talk about them”.

It was this use of crime as a way of talking about issues in modern urban society that drew Lee Child, himself a working-class man from Birmingham, to the book. When we asked him to choose a novel for this crime special, he didn’t hesitate in naming this one.

Together with Richard and Claire, he considers why it is so important in 21st-century British crime writing – and how Mitchell so cleverly puts the capital on the page.

Finally, we ask if it deserves a place on the shelves of our imaginary library of great books by and about working-class people.

Books and authors mentioned:

Margaret Atwood – The Handmaid’s Tale

Enid Blyton – The Famous Five series

Lee Child – Killing Floor

Philip Larkin – High Windows

John D. MacDonald – The Deep Blue Good-by

Denise Mina – The Good Liar

Dorothy L. Sayers – Murder Must Advertise

Robert Tressell – The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists

A Guide to Running Hot by Dreda Say Mitchell
Dreda Say Mitchell was told that “someone like her” would never be accepted as a writer. But in 2004 her east London-set novel Running Hot became a hit – and changed British crime fiction.
The BeeSiobhan McShane
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