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

Graham Smith on Location Telling Me the Story

Authors tell stories, we all know that, but one of the most asked questions of authors is “where do you get your ideas?” The answer varies from author to author and from book to book. I’ve personally had ideas inspired by a three second clip on the TV, a news story, a location I’ve visited and been inspired by.

What I’d like to explain now is how a specific location inspired me to write The Flood. Several years ago when my son was between five and nine, I’d often take him up the river where he could have a paddle, skim stones and generally have fun. At the side of the river was a small wood we’d walk through and I’d take a few slices of bread and before we left I’d build a fire by the river and toast the bread. All very idyllic and possibly a wee bit Enid Blyton so far, but the area we visited the river was in a narrow valley and there was a road on a banking that crossed the valley, and the river via a small bridge. This of course got my crime-writer’s mind working. 

What if there was a blockage at the bridge? What if the wire rope supporting a wooden fence to keep the cattle from passing under the bridge snagged of trees in a flood. Would the river be dammed? How far back up the valley would the flood waters go before they overtopped the road or burst their way through the dam and raged downstream? I knew there were no homes or farms either up or downstream from the bridge that would be affected by either rising floodwaters or a tsunami should the dam break, but I still wondered if the animals in the fields would be able to keep themselves safe.

As much as I asked myself these questions, I knew they were all hypothetical to me, and that as much as I might want to use the location as a setting for a story, I had no story to tell in that location.

It wasn’t until some years later when I saw a news report of wide scale flooding in England that I got the story. Instead of a valley, the flooded area was a wide plain, but I could see the roofs of houses poking from the murky brown floodwater. All except one, a two story house sat on a raised piece of ground evading the flooding that had engulfed the rest of its community. I pictured the scene in my mind, as the waters rose, those whose homes were affected would have sought a safe haven, namely high ground. But, when I applied my crime-writerly brain to the situation, I couldn’t help but ask myself, what if everyone who ended up in that house hated each other? What if one of them used the cloak of the flooding to kill a despised person?

I now had my story, a proper locked room or environment mystery, and I could set it in the valley I used to visit with my son. As a place it held many special memories for me and I didn’t want anything to tarnish how I think about those memories, but it was perfect for what I wanted to do. From there I found it easy to amalgamate the real physical properties my story needed from a location I was familiar with, then add the fictional farm and cottages I needed to house the characters I’d use to populate the novel.

I now had “my” valley mapped out in my mind, but I still needed a home for that valley. A place where the valleys are wide enough to be worth farming, yet not so wide as to be able to hold massive amounts of water without endangering life. It was then I settled on the Scottish Borders as a home for my valley.

The Borders are close to my home and I know valleys there play home to farms which produce milk from the lower lands and sheep and wool from the hills. 

From there it was easy to depict the valley as being remote enough the characters couldn’t hike for help, and now I had them marooned, I could let the killer among them loose.

The Flood by G N Smith (Bookouture) Out Now

There was a shape in the raging water. Fiona waded forward until she was knee-deep, holding her breath, steadying herself. Hoping. But the closer she got, the more Fiona was sure. She was looking at another victim. The murderer was here, with them. Police officer Fiona MacLeish has been ordered to step back from her role in Police Scotland. Haunted by the murder of her parents, she’s dangerously close to breaking point: and is back in her remote childhood home nestled in a valley on the Scottish border. But there’s a terrifying storm coming. When Fiona finds the bloodied body of a neighbour in their flooded house, a chill runs through her veins. The bruising around his throat tells Fiona someone wanted this elderly man dead. And with the torrential rain cutting the farming village off completely, the murderer must still be nearby. But flood waters continue to rise, and landslides force Fiona to take shelter with a crowd of locals at the highest-standing farm. Then, another victim is found, with more suspicious wounds. Trapped at the farm with a killer, with no hope of outside help, can Fiona catch them before more of the isolated community become victims?

The Island by G N Smith (Bookouture) Out Now

Her hands bang desperately on the window of Fiona’s car door as the wind flaps her pink hair sideways. Through the glass the distraught mother shrieks, ‘Please, you have to find her! You have to find my little girl.When eight-year-old Cait Yorke goes missing on a remote island off the coast of the wild Scottish Highlands, police officer Fiona MacLeishis quickly sent to investigate. But a gale is gathering force, and Fiona becomes increasingly concerned for a little girl braving the strong winds alone. As Fiona questions the locals, she soon realises that they are hiding many secrets. What is this island, and who really lives here?Then a boat violently crashes off the coast of the island. On board, Fiona discovers the body of a man who has clearly been murdered. But the killer is nowhere to be found. The only place they can be is on the island with no way out.Realising a killer is trapped on their island, tensions amongst the locals and Fiona begin to rise. As the gale rages on and the body count continues to rise, will Fiona find the young girl and the killer before they strike again?

More information about Graham Smith and his books caan be found on his wensite. He can also be found on Facebook and on X at @GrahamSmith.