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2000s: A seat of learning or a place of murder?
Murder on the Marshes
What you need to know before your trail
As the sun rises, a wealthy young woman – Samantha Seabrook – is found drowned in the ornamental fountain of a deserted Cambridge courtyard, the only clue – an antique silver chain wound tightly around her throat.
It’s Tara Thorpe’s job to discover what happened to Miss Seabrook – but the case becomes personal when she learns that Samantha had been receiving death threats… rather like the one that landed on Tara’s doorstep the night the woman died.
Together with Detective Inspector Garstin Blake, Tara tracks the killer to the dank and dangerous fens on the outskirts of the city. But there’s something Tara can’t quite admit to Blake about her past – and it could make all the difference to whether they live… or die.
Travel Guide
Cambridge
The book is set in Cambridge and the author states that she has tried to remain generally true to the city’s streets, architecture and open space. However locals will notice she’s taken a few liberties as she puts it with a few things, adding a college and giving Tara Thorpe a house in Stourbridge common where no houses exist in real life.
The author worked at Cambridge university but is keen to point out that the characters and events in the book are fictional. But then that’s what makes a place you know well, so fascinating to write about in fiction!
“ Cambridge was full of little rules and traditions that set people apart. He ought to know; he’s been brought up in the thick of it. But did that heave any bearing on what happened happened here”
The author is from Cambridge and says that the high-pressure, high-achieving pressure cooker kind of atmosphere the city proved to be the ideal background for a story of murderous intent.
“That was Cambridge for you. He wouldn’t live anywhere else, but itw was an odd city. Everything collided inside its compact boundaries: the ancient and the modern, the rare and the humdrum, the haves ad the have-nots.And now, here in the garden, one of the most intensely beautiful scenes he’e ever witnessed was a backdrop to one of the most chilling.”
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
There’s a lot going on at this Cambridgeshire college! Not since Inspector Morse have I read of such goings on. This is going to be a new gripping series of mysteries and subplots I think.Great characters already – I liked Tara from the off. Think she should move from that common though – and parking the car in Garlic Lane was apt when she kicked up a stink afterwards!
It goes to show that what happens in our pasts can have serious repercussions and come back to haunt us. There was depth to this novel which I liked and even after only a few chapters, it had built up nicely to a point where it felt like an series I’d read a few episodes of already.
I’m excited by this. I think we need a new series of mysteries and murders in Cambridge and the fens..yes the fens. They fascinate me as I spent countless summer holidays there when younger. They haunt the novel and the difference between them and the city, the city and those who live and work there…..ooh yes, I liked this one!
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Murder on the Marshes
Destination : Cambridge Author/Guide: Clare Chase Departure Time: 2000s
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