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2000s: The first in an intriguing new series featuring Bristol detective, DI David Vogel.
2000s: The first in an intriguing new series featuring Bristol detective, DI David Vogel.
A partially-clothed body of a teenage girl is found in the heart of Bristol’s red light district. At first, it would seem to be a tragic yet familiar scenario. However there is a lot more to this than marks the eye – fourteen-year-old Melanie Cooke told her mother she was visiting a school friend. Who was she really going to meet?
Detective Inspector David Vogel is led towards three very different people who could be linked in some way to the horrific crime. But sometimes you pull a loose thread, the whole sweater comes apart, other times it takes you on a long and winding path
At the end of one of these threads is the dark and complex secret which lies behind Melanie’s death
Hilary Bonner’s Guide to the city
Stone Lane where the girl is found is of course fictional but it still sounds grim:
“Stone Lane remained shadowy an somehow forbidding. The entire network of insalubrious alleyways ad cul-de-sacs, which led off West Street and OldMarket Street, was inhabited only by rats and the occasional prowling cat after dark.”
This is the oldest pub in Bristol and no place for a young girl. The pub is showing its age in the novel and is better known for late night brawls apparently.
There’s an address south of the city which becomes of interest but this is fictional as is the girl’s school the North Bristol Academy
This is not the Bristol you would want to visit in real life however. For that – the Clifton Bridge, the Castle Park and the 32-metre high Cabot viewing tower, built in 1897, for 400th anniversary of John Cabot’s voyage to Newfoundland. You’ll get a much nicer view of the city from here!
Author/Guide: Hilary Bonner Destination: Bristol, London Departure Time: 2000s
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