When it comes to murder, it’s location, location, location - Tom Hindle

Tom Hindle, author of Murder on Lake Garda, chats about how location play such a vital role in a murder mystery

Tell us about how you landed on Murder on Lake Garda as the location for your new whodunnit. Was it somewhere you had always wanted to explore?

In a funny sort of way, it actually came to me. I was on holiday, visiting Lake Garda, and having climbed to the top of the watchtower in the breathtaking Castello Malcesine, I happened to look down on a wedding that was taking place in one of the castle courtyards. I can vividly remember taking it all in – the glamour of the ceremony, the magnificent architecture, the natural splendour of the lake – and being immediately convinced that I was looking at a phenomenal opening chapter to a murder mystery.

At the time, I had actually spent three months working on an altogether different mystery, which would have taken place at a funeral in rural Yorkshire. But I was so enamoured with the Lake Garda idea that within a few weeks I’d abandoned the Yorkshire novel completely and shifted all my focus onto writing the manuscript that would become Murder on Lake Garda. 

How important is location to a murder mystery?

It’s vital. Try to imagine Holmes without the gaslit streets of Victorian London or Miss Marple without a quaint country village – it’s a virtually impossible feat. Those locations are as important to the story as the characters that populate them.

I’m constantly trying to emulate that – or to achieve it, rather – in my own writing. Wherever possible, I try to ensure that the mysteries I’m constructing could only take place in those very specific locations. Likewise, I try to make sure that each detail, however small, is as heavily informed by the location as possible. 

For instance, in Murder on Lake Garda, one of our characters – a classic car dealer – lends his soon-to-be son-in-law his favourite car for the weekend of the wedding. In the very first draft, that car was an Aston Martin V8 Vantage; for my money, one of the most beautiful classic cars ever produced. But I quickly realised that, of course, the classic car speeding along beside a glittering Italian lake should in fact be a bright red vintage Ferrari. It’s a change that has absolutely no bearing on the plot, but it helps to achieve a certain tone and atmosphere. It draws the reader in and grounds them even further in that setting.

These are the kind of location-based influences that I’m constantly looking for opportunities to weave in. To that end, in Murder on Lake Garda you’ll also find a priceless Venetian dagger, a secret cove hidden beneath the castle, two members of the Italian mafia and a mysterious boat speeding away across the surface of the lake. Whether they contribute to the overall atmosphere or to the construction of the mystery itself, none would have been at home in either of my previous mysteries.

What advice would you give about choosing a location?

I’ve been thinking a lot, this past year, about the idea of a location being a character in its own right. For a long while, I had a sense of what that was about – an instinctive sort of feeling – but I struggled to articulate exactly what it meant for me as a writer. What it meant for the stories that I write. And the conclusion I’ve now reached is that: every character has to want something – has to be striving for something. So if we consider our location to be a character, and we follow that logic, what does your location want? Does it want to keep secrets? Does it want to welcome you in or does it want to be wild and to push back against human intrusion? Does it want to kill you, even? 

It isn’t always an easy question to answer. But whether I’m writing about a single room, a building, a city or even an entire country, I find thinking about a location in those terms to be incredibly useful.

We know you’re hard at work on a fourth mystery – where in the world are you taking us next?

Somewhere completely different! I don’t want to say too much about it just yet, as I think there’s still about a year to go before it hits shelves. But I will say that in order to research it, I went for a week last summer to Svalbard, an archipelago in the Arctic Circle. Staying in a town called Longyearbyen, the world’s northernmost permanent settlement, I saw glaciers, whales, reindeer... I think that probably gives a good idea of the vibe. In any case, readers can expect a much frostier mystery than in Murder on Lake Garda.

Murder on Lake Garda is by Tom Hindle (Century) Out Now.

One happy couple. Two divided families. A wedding party to die for. On the private island of Castle Fiore - surrounded by the glittering waters of Lake Garda - the illustrious Heywood family gathers begrudgingly for their son Laurence's wedding to Italian influencer Eva Bianchi. But as the ceremony begins, a blood-curdling scream brings the proceedings to a devastating halt. With the wedding guests trapped as they await the police, old secrets come to light and family rivalries threaten to bubble over. Everyone is desperate to know...Who is the killer? And can they be found before they strike again?

Tom Hindle can be found on X @TomHindle3