CRIME READERS LOCAL HISTORY WALKS MONTH

May is local history month, national walking month and national crime reading month, so the fantastic team at Bridgwater Library have set to work to create a wonderful display to combine the three. If you’re in the Somerset area, pop in and say hello to the friendly team and check out their selection of crime novels set locally, books on historic Somerset crime, and walks in the surrounding area.

Our very own David Hodges and his Sergeant Kate series are included in the local Crime Walks, where readers are invited to walk the locations of some of the murders in books by local crime writers, including David, and immerse themselves in their stories.

Thank you to everyone at Bridgwater Library for creating this immersive experience. If any of our readers participate in one of David’s Crime Walks, please get in touch at office@joffebooks.com and let us know what it was like to follow in the footsteps of Sergeant Kate and her team of trusty detectives. You can find out more about the local Crime Walks in Somerset by visiting Bridgwater Library or their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/BridgwaterLibraryUK.

THE DETECTIVES
Kate is a feisty, young police detective, with a dynamic approach to her job. She is plucky and tenacious, but prone to being impetuous and headstrong, which often lands her in tight spots and does not exactly endear her to her crusty detective inspector.

In stark contrast to Kate, her detective partner, Hayden, is an overweight, untidy ex-public schoolboy, with a pompous, laid-back attitude, which drives her to distraction. But he is also highly intelligent, with a keen, analytical mind and a practical, reasoned approach to everything, which, with a prevailing wind, can sometimes act as a brake on his partner’s more impulsive actions.

THE SETTING
A patchwork of fields, peat moor and marshland, dotted with picturesque villages and criss-crossed by man-made irrigation ditches or rhynes, the Somerset Levels covers an area of about 160,000 acres between the Mendips and Quantock Hills, in the County of Somerset. Sparsely populated outside the local towns of Bridgwater, Glastonbury and Street and prone to flooding, it is a haven for wildlife. A wild, secret place with an atmospheric brooding stillness that creeps into the very soul; a place where the booming call of a bittern or the beating of an owl’s wings in the mist is bound to fire the imagination of any self-respecting crime novelist, whose thoughts will invariably turn to . . . murder.

THE AUTHOR
David Hodges is a former police superintendent with thirty years’ service. Since ‘turning to crime’, he has received critical media acclaim, including a welcome accolade from Inspector Morse’s creator, the late great, Colin Dexter, and he is now a prolific novelist with eleven published crime novels and an autobiography on his police career to his credit. His previous police experience has enabled him to provide a gritty realism to his thrillers and his Somerset Murder Series, featuring feisty female detective, Kate, and her partner, Hayden, has gone from strength to strength, attracting interest in the United States as well as in the UK.