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2000s: When a woman goes missing, it gets personal for one of the officers on the case
The Body in the Marsh
What you need to know before your trail
Criminologist Martin Knight lives a gilded life and is a thorn in the side of the police. But then his wife Liz goes missing.
To make things worse, Liz is the ex-girlfriend of DCI Craig Gillard who is drawn into the investigation. Her husband Martin, a long term critic of the police force, doesn’t appear too worried about her disappearance and then he too disappears
Two missing people, a missing husband and blood at the house where he and his wife went missing…
Locations
Reset- England - Surrey
- A: Coulsdon
- B: Caterham - Caldon Road
- C: Caterham -Surrey Police
- England - Kent
- D: Romney Marsh
- E: Dungness Power plant
- England - The Lake District
- F: Scafell Pike
- G: Wasdale Head car park
Travel Guide
Nick Louth on location
If there’s bodies in marshes to be had, then no better place that Romney Marsh really! Normally a great haven for birds and wildlife and if you visit there, you’ll really appreciate what a fascinating landscape it is, as well as a deadly and lonely one in this novel!
Romney Marsh
A newspaper article from 1954 reveals a grisly discovery of a woman’s body in Romney Marsh, a mile away from where the present day novel takes place.
Great Wickings, Dungeness
The couple’s holiday cottage where the wife is thought to have gone. It’s a “funny little wooden place, more like an overgrown shack really, close to that monstrosity of a nuclear power station at Dungeness.”
The Lake District – Scafell Pike
Where DI Craig Gillard decides to have a holiday, a break 300 miles north of his Surrey base.
“Two pitches up Botterill’s Slab on Scafell’s Central Buttress, one of Britain’s toughest rock climbs. Rags and Banners of cloud cavorted beneath, masking the harsh fans of screen hundreds of feet below, and the serpentine path further out towards Mickledore and Wasdale Head car park”
Best advice on how to manage the mountainous terrain? Not to do what a party of women did who had to be rescued from Ben Nevis, having planned to reach the summit with “Ice axes and tampons”
Surrey
Catherham Surrey – The police station there and in the novel is one which could be mistaken for a neglected suburban library were it not for the solitary patrol car out side, apparently.
Old Coulsdon
The address where the woman goes missing from – in Chaldon Rise, a crescent of beautiful houses in Old Coulsdon, where the southern fringes of London’s surburban sprawl washed u against the chalk hills of the North Downs
Streetview Maps
C) Surrey - Caterham police station
E) Kent - Romney Marsh
Booktrailer Review
Susan:@thebooktrailer
A very atmospheric crime mystery this one with settings and landscapes where there are either marshes or rocky, dangerous mountains. So much could happen here couldn’t it? And it does. The settings here more than added tension and expectation to the mix and made for a backdrop to some really twisty turnings of a novel.
I did find the lead DI a little bit of a wimp at times though pining for a woman he’d dated but barely knew. Still, an emotional policeman makes a change from one who drinks his way through every case. DS Mulholland was a very put together officer and she was a nice addition to the story. A good colleague for the DI and a good example you would hope!
As well as the main criminal mystery thread, there was a nice side story of a past case which comes back to haunt and this made for more intrigue and a story relevant to todays world.
A very good thriller which makes me want to read what Nick writes next. Make me very nervous of that marsh though and I thought Elly Griffiths had more than done that with her books set there!
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Body in the Marsh
Destination: Romney Marsh, Lake District, Caterham, Guildford Author/Guide: Nick Louth Departure Time: 2000s
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