Books set in weird and wonderful places
Books set in weird and wonderful places
I’ve come across some books recently that got me thinking just where I end up when I read. I mean I love a gothic thriller in an old house as much as the next person or a books set on a beach but there are also some other books which have taken me to some places, sometimes I’d rather not go and certainly not for real.
A deadly lake
I need a word with that Richard Madeley for one. The Lake District is not as picturesque and idyllic as everyone would have us believe? Well,there are bodies being found in the lakes, drowned by the cold , no make that the freezing cold area that lies just a few feet from the surface! Did you know this? I’ve paddled in those lakes and watched friends swim (whilst I was otherwise engaged eating icecream on the shore I seem to remember) Well I won’t be looking at those lakes in the same way again!
A nuclear powerplant
Well it’s not every day you get to see inside Chernobyl and the surrounding area. Somewhere which is infamous the world over for being the site of one of the most catastrophic accidents in a nuclear powerplant not to mention one of the greatest human tragedies of the 1980s. This was a fascinating novel on so many levels and it felt less like an Exclusion Zone but more like a honour to walk in what is essentially hallowed ground now. You get the chance to see it up close and the tragedy of what happened after the event itself. This thriller for me had all the right ingredients and a really unusual and fascinating setting!
A bird Sanctuary and another powerplant
A man who knows a murderer because he is one. A man who likes to go birdwatching…. Now in this book I found out there was a difference between bird watching and bird twitching and bird spotting. I know. Still not sure to be honest but there’s the information here if you want it. This is a great introduction to the hobby and the Kent Marshands where it’s set. You’d think bird watching (or whatever) was one of the safest pastimes to do, whether fictionally or for real, but then this is William Shaw who takes you there. And there’s a powerplant – Dungeness – nearby incase you miss the exclusion zone of the last book.
A Cornish tin mine
Now Poldark has a lot to answer for. One of them is for introducing me to the wonder of the tin and copper mines of Cornwall. I started to think of these places as somewhere where rugged men with shaggy hair spend their days digging …Above the Cornnish moorland, fit for riding horses and letting your hair loose in the wind, or for spying on people swimming in the coves below. So imagine my horror when I revisited the same sites with S K Treymayne in the company of one devil child? I’ve had to rewatch the entire series of Poldark just to calm my nerves. (Saying that it’s a good book now that I’ve gone back to Poldark country)
An Essex river
You’d think that all you had to fear in Essex was something TOWIE related. But no, turns out there might have been something weird lurking there back in 1893… Something slimy and a bit strange lurking in the river…It was said to be the stuff of folklore this serpent but others believed it really existed. The novel shows the strength of beliefs at the time -those who believed in it and those who thought it was nothing but a creation of someone with an active imagination. History really does repeat itself sometimes!
Now I’m off to calm myself with a strong glass of something. Although not the drink in Alice in Wonderland. We all remember what happened there…!
Susan Booktrailer
