Harbour Street (Vera Stanhope 6)

Travel Guide

Most of the places featured in the book are indeed fictional – Mardle, Partington and of course Harbour Street itself doesn’t exist – but the TV version of the novel was filmed in and around the village of Amble in Northumberland – which is utterly gorgeous and not at all like its fictional village – not in the slightest!

This is a novel where the setting IS one of the leading characters and even though the Mardle of the novel is fictional, it is no less threatening and gloomy –
Mardle wasn’t a place for tourists, even in the summer. There was nothing beyond the fisheries except the harbour, enclosed by the wall. The boats there were dark shadows, half-hidden by the drifting flakes.

Vera comes to Harbour Street to investigate the death of Margaret Krukowski and we follow her lumbering footsteps into one of the creepiest and suspicious sounding places where everyone has a secret and no one wants to talk.

This is a side of Vera’s stomping ground that she is not used to and has to painstakingly immerse herself into, penetrating the hardened Northern Shell over this place. But this desolate coastal town has an air of mystery and rawness to it that is at odds with the charismatic and wealthy victim. Intrigue is Vera’s sidekick here it would seem as well as charming Joe Ashworth.

It is not just the Northumberland landscape that is featured as we also get a short tour around the city of Newcastle itself –

“Newcastle was full of people and friendly, they walked arm in arm between the art galleries , crossing the tyne by the Blinking Eye Bridge.”

The place here to visit where Vera goes is the Lit and Phil – where Vera herself describes as ‘where book lovers hang out’

You should pay attention to women of a certain age wearing brown anoraks, tweed skirt, with a Geordie accent…..mind how you go, pet.

Let Vera and Ann be your guide to (fictional) Mardle, the TV version of which was filmed in Amble. The cover depicts a photo of The Cliff House at Amble.