Kate Rhodes explains why Tresco is the ideal setting for her new thriller, Ruin Beach
When I told my husband that my new D.I. Ben Kitto book would be set in Tresco, he looked at me in amazement. I had to work hard to make him see why the place chills me, with its innate sense of menace. It’s one of the most popular locations in the Isles of Scilly, with day trippers strolling ashore, determined to see the orchids and rare plants inside the world-famous Abbey Gardens, but when winter’s chill descends and the population reduces to less than 200 permanent residents, the island’s darker side emerges.
Tresco is the only privately-owned island in the Scillies, leased from the Duchy of Cornwall by the Dorrien-Smith family since 1834. No one is entitled to own property there, with all of the picture-perfect holiday cottages run as time-shares. Once the population thins, the two-mile-long island becomes a ghost town. It resembles Portmeirion; a haunted stage set with manicured lawns, and a helipad for super-rich visitors, but the shops, hotels and pubs are all closed. The story of RUIN BEACH is set before the tourist season begins, when the locals are thrown back on their own resources and the Atlantic is unsettled by harsh sea breezes. Tresco lies just a thirty minute boat ride from the larger island of St Mary’s, but storms can interrupt the ferry service and leave the place isolated for days.
The island’s history makes it an ideal setting for murder and mayhem. It has always been an embattled place, used as a strategic defence point by Roman settlers and later by Oliver Cromwell during the English Civil War. Evidence of its military past is littered across the coastline, with the Gothic ruins of castles, batteries and fortifications towering above every beach. Smugglers have left their mark on the island too. Until the end of the seventeenth century trading in contrabrand was Tresco’s main form of employment, because the island lay too far from the mainland for customs and excise men to catch the law breakers. Ruin Beach gained its name from the hundreds of ships that foundered close by, only to have their goods plundered by locals who battled fierce waves to reach the wrecks in the island’s sailing gigs. Pieces of wreckage, broken barrels and the bodies of drowned sailors washed ashore at Ruin Beach for days after a ship broke apart on the spikes of basalt that lie hidden at the edge of the cove, below the sea’s surface.
The starting point for my book is a place that terrified me during my childhood summer holidays. Piper’s Hole is a sea cave on the northern coast of Tresco; a dank and murky place used long ago by smugglers to hide stolen goods. My sister scared the living daylights out of me, with tales of drownings and ghostly pirates. Local storytellers also paint a dark picture of the place, claiming that the cave runs so deep below the sea’s surface, the tunnel connects with St Mary’s, several nautical miles away.
Tresco gave me all the elements I needed as the setting for my new novel. DI Kitto must investigate the death of a professional deep-sea diver who has been running diving trips to the many wrecks that lie just off-shore, but the local community guards its secrets. He discovers that the island’s identity is inextricably linked to the sea, which can turn murderous in the blink of an eye.
Ruin Beach by Kate Rhodes published by Simon and Schuster.
The island of Tresco holds a dark secret someone will kill to protect. Ben Kitto has become the Scilly Isles’ Deputy Chief of Police. As the island’s lazy summer takes hold, he finds himself missing the excitement of the murder squad in London. But when the body of professional diver Jude Trellon is discovered, anchored to the rocks of a nearby cave, his investigative skills are once again needed. At first it appears that the young woman’s death was a tragic accident, but when evidence is found that suggests otherwise, the islanders close ranks. With even those closest to the victim refusing to talk, it seems that plenty of people might have had reason to harm her. As the islanders remain guarded, Ben Kitto suspects a killer is on the loose in Tresco. Everyone is a suspect. Nobody is safe.
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More information about Kate Rhodes and her books can be found on her website. You can also follow her on Twitter @K_RhodesWriter.
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