Without a Trace

Travel Guide

Sawbridge in Somerset

This village may be fictional although there is a Sawbridge in Warwickshire but this story belongs in a special time and place – a Somerset village at the time of the Coronation in 1953. This is the essence of the novel -where children were allowed to roam free and where bunting lined the streets and jam tarts jostled for place with celebratory mugs.

“The high street was decked out with bunting,much of which she’d run up herself on the sewing machine”

This is the town where there is a fancy dress competition and a best village shop-window display with eggs, strawberries and cheddar cheese making a display wrapped in a purple coronation cloak. Even the rain can’t put a dampener on this day.
But there are dark clouds gathering over this idyllic country picture. Cassie’s home –

“Stone Cottage was still lovely even in the rain, albeit with a slightly sinister tinge because the birdsong halted and the tree trunks took on a fairy-tale menace”

The village takes on darker tone when Cassie is found murdered. There has been some hostility towards her before her death. Only Molly seems to have befriended her. And Molly has not had it easy in the village either. Could the villagers here be small minded and hostile to her investigations?

London

London in contrast is a big bustling city but Molly is surprised by it and realises that it’s not all that its cracked up to be –

From the glitz and the glamour of Oxford Street to the poverty of the East End and Whitechapel, to the small town of Rye, Molly’s at times too trusting nature gets her into situations she would prefer not to get into and to meet people that she would never have met in her Somerset village.

A search for her friend reveals much of herself and her place in the world.