The Take (Di Joe Faraday 2 )

Travel Guide

Portsmouth

If DC Faraday ever gets a day off, there’s plenty to do in Portsmouth that doesn’t involve fighting crime. It’s a unique city since it’s both a port city and naval base. Plenty of maritime heritage and lots of activity down at the docks….

The nice kind of activity is based on the maritime history of the city – the interactive National Museum of the Royal Navy and the wooden warship HMS Victory, where Nelson died in the Battle of Trafalgar can be seen.

Langstone Harbour

Faraday’s first floor studio looked east over the gleaming expanse of Langstone Harbour. His place is called The Bargemaster’s house. Langstone Harbor is the stretch of water to the east of the city that helped give Pompey its island status.

When he can’s sleep he often gets up and nurses a cup of tea whilst looking out over the harbour:

“A pale grey wash spilling over the mud flats of Langstone Harbour”

The wildlife is a lot nicer and calmer than the humans he has to work with! and it’s this he seems to appreciate:

He could see turnstones strutting across the pebbled flats, pausing from time to time to poke around in the pools of standing water. Several of them seemed to follow the mooring lines that snakes out to dinghies and larger craft marooned by the sluicing tide, and he watched a group of three as they squabbled over a yellow smudge of mussel”

However he soon likens them to the humans he deals with:

Aggressive behaviour was rare amongst turnstones, but over the last few months he’d noticed a number of episodes like these. Must go with the territory, he thought. Inner-city turnstones. Bred to be stroppy.

Milton Common

There’s a woman walking in the park here at the start of the novel. It borders Langstone Harbour so has lovely views. Again not so much in the novel, but in real life, definately!