Publication: 16 April 2026
The thrillers and murder mysteries that most linger in the mind are those with memorable settings. This book explores twenty of these deadly landscapes and the places which inspired them.
Hardyment walks appreciatively through dark imaginings, paying enjoyably
grateful, sometimes quizzical tribute to the spirit of landscape in classic
crime fiction.
- Libby Purves
How did a beautiful Georgian house inspire Agatha Christie’s Dead Man’s Folly? Or a stretch of the East Anglian coast become the place in which a murder victim is discovered in P.D. James’s Devices and Desires?
Novel Crime Scenes explores the landscapes of twenty crime novels in forensic detail. Beginning with the Devon moorland of The Hound of the Baskervilles (1899) and ending with London’s Brick Lane as described in Ajay Chowdhury’s The Waiter (2021), it ranges from John Buchan’s Galloway Hills and Gwen Moffat’s Cape Wrath to Ellis Peters’s Shropshire, Margery Allingham’s Essex, Colin Dexter’s Oxford and Sam Llewellyn’s Isles of Scilly. Each chapter also delves into the author’s background and discovers what the setting of the book meant to them, often by following in the footsteps of Britain’s best-known crime writers.
Whether you are an armchair detective or an intrepid investigator, this book will inspire you to appreciate old favourites with deeper insights and discover thrilling new literary destinations.
CHRISTINA HARDYMENT is a writer and journalist with particular interests in literary, geography and medieval history mysteries. She is the author of Novel Houses (Bodleian Library Publishing, 2019).
- Hardback
- ISBN: 9781851246410
- 192 pages
- Size: 234 x 156 mm
- Illustrations: 20 Line drawings, black
& white
