The Bones Beneath

Author/Guide: Mark Billingham

Why a Booktrail?

2000s: A criminal leads police to a remote Welsh island in order to search for bodies…chilling

ISBN: 978-0751552201
Genre: Crime, Thriller

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What you need to know before your trail

Stuart Nicklin, the most dangerous psychopath Tom Thorne has ever put behind bars, promises to reveal the whereabouts of a body he buried twenty-five years before. But only if Thorne agrees to take him back to the remote island where the body lies hidden…

If there’s any place you would not want to be with a psychopath then its a remote Welsh island cut off fro the mainland. But the police know that the family of the victim need answers.

But Nicklin knows this island like the back of his hand and knows where the best places are to bury a body and where he can outwit the police.

Tom Thorne is in danger….

Locations

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Travel Guide

“The boat bumped gently along the thick layer of tyres that had been fixed to the wall.

Once it was safely on the trailer, the Benlli III was hauled out of the water , up on to Bardsey Island.”

Welcome…

And so is the arrival of Tom Thorne to a remote island in Wales where his worst dreams could be realised.

For once, if you have followed other Tom Throne novels, the man is taken away from his comfort zone here away from the city and to a remote Welsh island. Can’t get more different than that.

The change of landscape shows a new side to Tom Thorne – a nervous one as he has to accompany a prisoner to the site where he has apparently buried a body
Morgan has been spot on about the weather: the difference in temperature between the island and the mainland.

Imagine going to a remote Welsh island – the sense of arriving on the boat, having no phone signal (vital for a city boy) and feeling either a sense of abandonment and isolation or escapism and a sense of freedom. Now imagine you’re with a psychopath and you realise there is nowhere to hide or to run. You are exposed as is the island…..

“He listened to the low moan of the wind outside, the bleating of sheep like the horns on of toy cars and the constant screen of gulls”

A grim return to the island to find a body. The setting is striking and if it weren’t for the subject matter , a great advert for the island. Indeed the author writes about the setting more at eh back of the book and explains how it enthralled him.

The search for a body on a remote island seems like the ideal scenario for a crime novel and we certainly see the island through the eyes of both the police and Nicklin himself.

The landscape and the bird wildlife evoke the magic whilst the reasons for the police being there is not far from everyone’s mind –

“The island was administered through a privately funded trust, dedicated to protecting its wildlife and archaeological heritage.”

Then if you add the religious history of the island and the story of a king –

This is quite a setting. Listen out for the Manx Shearwater (duck like creatures) at night, watch the sun set behind the abbey ruins, visit the bird sanctuary and if you’re ghoulish you could even head for the spot where there just might be something buried….