Why a Booktrail?
1960s: A woman is fascinated with the house across the street..
The House Across the Street
What you need to know before your trail
Twenty-three-year-old Katy Speed has always been fascinated by the house across the street . . .
The woman who lives there, Gloria, is the most glamorous neighbour on the avenue, owning a fashionable dress shop in Bexhill-on-Sea. But who is the woman who arrives in the black car most Saturdays while Gloria is at work? Sometimes she brings women to the house, and other times the women come with children.
Hilda, Katy’s mother, disapproves of Gloria. She wonders where these mysterious visitors have come from, and what they want. Does Gloria have sinister reasons for secretly bringing strangers into the heart of the community?
Then one night, the house burns down. In the wreckage, the bodies of Gloria and her daughter are found. Katy is sure the unexplained strangers must be responsible, until her father is arrested and charged with murder.
Surely the police have arrested the wrong person?
Is the rest of the street safe?
Can Katy find the truth before it’s too late?
Travel Guide
Travel to Bexhill-on-Sea BookTrail style with Lesley Pearse
The lovely small seaside town of Bexhill on Sea gets pride of place in this novel by Lesley Pearse. It’s the 1960s so the houses still have net curtains up and there are humber cars on the road. Noisy neighbours have been around for years, but the one in this novel sees more than she cares to see and is soon thrust into a murder mystery.
Most of the locations are real so take care to walk up Collingwood Avenue (there is no burned out house there though thank goodness) and be sure to take extreme care if driving from Bexhill to Winchelsea as that’s the road where there’s a car accident.
Bexhill is where the young girls in the novel live and where they want to escape to a more exciting life in London. Brighton seems to be the place where they also escape to as it’s nearby. London is the city where it’s all happening and in this novel, the streets, clubs, tube stations all get mentions as Katy explores her new home. The buzz, the chaos of a new city and the excitment of finding a new job and flat is very much the flavour of the novel (although house hunting seems not to have changed much!)
The novel takes in the settings and transports the reader back to a simpler time, but one where women were second class citizens and the issues of rape, violence and domestic abuse were barely acknowledged by largely male police officers.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The House Across the Street
Destination: Bexhill on Sea, London Author/Guide: Lesley Pearse Departure Time: 1960s
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