McGraw: Tales from the City

by Julie Morrigan, Steven Miscandlon (Editor)

“McGraw? Sure, I can tell you about McGraw. Imagine in some nameless city on the other side of yesterday, there’s this poor sap with a heart two sizes too big. The guy falls hard for this vision of a dame, all porcelain cheekbones and ruby lips. Twist is, he’s a cop and she’s just killed a guy. Between you and me, that story was never gonna have a happy ending – and that was just the start of McGraw’s rotten luck. Took a bullet, lost his badge and crawled deep into a bottle the way only the heartbroken know how. Gotta give the guy his due, though. Last I heard he’d found some of his old spark, set himself up as an honest-to-goodness private eye, would you believe? So, yeah, McGraw’s okay. You wanna know any more, it’ll cost ya.”

Tales from the City is a novella-length collection which includes “Star” and “Wish Upon a Star” – the two short stories that introduced Julie Morrigan’s old-school “film noir” hardboiled detective – and two new, longer stories that follow McGraw’s dogged investigations from the depths of the gutter to the corruption of high society.

85 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 26, 2016

About the author

Julie Morrigan is the author of various novels, novellas and short stories, and best known for her gritty crime tales based in the north-east of England. Her most recent publication is horror novella Blackthorn Cottage, in which evil deeds from over a century earlier affect a family in the present day.

Her most recent novel is gangland novel Flesh and Blood, which follows crime thriller Debt of Honour, both published in 2024.

Gangland novel Cutter features the brutal exploits of vicious Sunderland gangster Gordon Cutter and his criminal firm.

For fans of short stories, Bad Times: North-East Crime collects Julie's shorter tales, originally published in the collections Gone Bad, Show No Mercy and Wired. Many also previously appeared in anthologies and magazines such as Bullet and Out of the Gutter.

Julie shares stories and news via her Substack newsletter, Bad Intent: https://juliemorrigan.substack.com/