Why a Booktrail?
2000s: A crime that seems to echo one which took place more than 200 years earlier….
The Night Stalker
What you need to know before your trail
Dead Woman’s Ditch. The site of a grisly two-hundred-year-old murder – and a recent hit and run. When a young woman’s body is found at the macabre landmark in Somerset’s Quantock Hills, DI Mike Lockyer and Sergeant Jane Bennett are called in to investigate.
But the legend has a stronger hold than the police realise and they are suprised to find that many people are still afraid of it , and of its consequences. How do you solve a murder that seems to have been committed by a ghost?
When more girls are found murdered, Dead Woman’s Ditch becomes a kind of macabre homage to the past. The Somerset hillsides becomes a dangerous hunting ground at night and no- one seems to be safe from the shadows.
Locations
Reset- England - Somerset Quantock Hills
- A: Taunton -Dead Woman's Ditch
- B: Crowcombe - The Carew Arms
- C: Taunton -The Willow Man
- D: Shervage Wood
- E: Clevedon
Travel Guide
Quantock Hills in Somerset
A place of legends and a ghost!
The author was researching the area in order to set a story here when she accidentally came across the place they call Dead Woman’s Ditch. It is well known in local legend for being the place where in 1789, John Walford married Jane Shorney – a marriage forced upon him after Jane got pregnant. (They already had one child together but the family had come to a financial arrangement instead of forced wedlock) It is said that she already had a baby with his brother but this can’t be proven.
The wedding went ahead but just six weeks later as they were on their way home after an evening in the local pub, John beat his wife to death and left her body in Dead Woman’s Ditch. When she was discovered, John was arrested and later hanged on a gibbet so that people could see what happened to those who murdered others.
This book takes that local legend and weaves a tale of shocking brutality as the past comes back for revenge. Spooky stuff!
Streetview Maps
A) Somerset - Quantock Hills - Dead Woman's Dith
C) Somerset - the Willow Man
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
This book is unlike anything I’ve ever read. And in a very good way I hasten to add! A crime which remained tucked away in the annals of history but which is still wrapped around the throats and minds of people in the community now.
With a premise like that, I’d expected to like this book but in the hands of Clare Donoghue this becomes much more than the summary of its parts. It’s a crime novel ,a police procedural but not as we know it! Totally ramped up the tension and excitement for me, the chase scenes were totally creepy and tense, the idea that Stephen King’s Christine could be being played out…
The end result when it comes was nicely done – as twisty and turny as those Somerset country roads. I love a good legend and this was well crafted into a modern day police procedural with gritty urban cops with attitude.
Out on August 8th and I think this deserves to be on that TBR pile – either that or the cloaked stranger on the moors might come looking for you….
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Night Stalker
Destination: Somerset, Taunton, Quantock Hills Author/Guide: Emily Koch Departure Time: 2000s
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