Talking Location With author B E Jones – USA National Parks

9th April 2020

#TalkingLocationWith... B E Jones, author of Wilderness, set in the National Parks of USA.

Location. Location. Location.

Perfect selfie spot? Scenery to die for? Great place to kill someone?

Probably all of the above if you’re on holiday with me, because we crime novelists are a strange bunch. While everyone else is sunning themselves by the azure sea, admiring picturesque ruins or appreciating the ambience of an evening drink, al fresco, we’re probably thinking, that archway is great spot for an assignation, you could kill someone with that barbecue fork, that set of slippery steps is an accident waiting to happen…

Because, be honest, a little dramatic atmosphere adds something to every trip. Why else do we choose our holiday reads with such care? A great location isn’t just the ‘set dressing’ for a novel, for me, it always plays an active role in the impetus of a mystery, a murder usually, that couldn’t take place anywhere else.

That’s why two epic road trips I took through North America’s national parks inspired my latest novel Wilderness, about a dream holiday that turns deadly, every spectacular mile making me gleefully consider everything that could go wrong. Because it’s big out there, proper big – not like the Brecon Beacons at home in Wales is big, or the Lake District in Cumbria is a bit spread out. America is massive, and it’s dangerous out there in the high passes and baking deserts, where there are great heights to fall from and everything seems keen to burn, bite and eat you where there’s no phone signal.

The author atop a canyon

For example, what do you do if you’re walking along the pine-clad rim of the Hetch Hetchy reservoir in Yosemite, California, when a semi-naked man emerges from the trees carrying a six-foot-long wooden stick? It was a weird moment, certainly, confronted by a skinny apparition with a beard you could hide a badger in, dressed in what looked like a little leather loincloth. My husband and I gave each other the secret smile that means ‘weirdo alert’, because who was this guy, up in the mountainous Sierra Nevadas? A sun-leathered, old-world prophet from a 70s hippie commune, just wandering for fun or did he need help? Did we, come to think of it? Because who was out there to come to our aid if he turned out to be a survivalist nutter, intent on dispatching us and stealing our peanut butter Clif bars? What would we do to defend ourselves, armed only with a small multitool and a heck of a lot of bug spray?

We never did find out who he was as he gave a friendly wave and strode past with the words, ‘Great day, huh?’ like nothing was out of the ordinary.

The View hotel run by the Navajo

Then on another occasion I found myself standing at the top of Yosemite’s Glacier Point, among the majestic granite peaks. While the Japanese tourists snapped photos, I was struck by the sudden image of the slender guard rail I was leaning against splintering, a person falling from the precipice, clad in a red coat, sailing like a single drop of blood into the valley below. (I warned you I was strange).

Later that evening, in our not-so-rustic 4*cabin, (air-con, cracking margaritas in the camp bar up the hill), I remember being mesmerised by a giant map of Yosemite covering one wall. In the bottom corner was a tiny section showing the valley with its visitor centre, the other 80pc just tangled green shading emblazoned with the ominous word wilderness.So, a novel title was born – a story started to take shape.

Close to the edge of South Rim

Two years later we travelled through Arizona and Utah into the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley. Dwarfed by the epic red rock landscapes that once accompanied John Wayne’s swagger, I imagined another couple on a road trip like ours, except an unhappy one.  Because after the tourists retired for the night, under the gaze of the stuffed animal heads at the Grand Canyon’s historic El Tovar lodge, it was easy to imagine how the stunning environment could also be treacherous – basically, the perfect place to get away with murder.

Tip, don’t let your other half convince you can hike down the Bright Angel trail at 6am, from the South rim to Plateau Point and back in seven hours. I did make it, only because the thought of having to be rescued by donkey train was too humiliating for words, but there was almost a real strangling homicide/divorce two miles from the top on the way back.

Sunrise from the hotel room

So, when my protagonist Olivia goes out into the wild with her unfaithful husband Will, she doesn’t exactly have an intricate plan to deal with him. As she says, it’s simply a case of having ‘contingencies at hand’, opportunities built into the lonely hikes, the dangerous cliffs, the natural weapons at every turn. What Will doesn’t know is that she’s set him three secret tests to prove he’s sorry along the way, and, if he fails, his road trip might be a lot shorter than he realises.

The author at Big Buttes

Liv has to ask herself if, away from the city, she’s as civilised as she likes to think she is, wrestling with the idea that kept me company along 1500 miles of scorched tarmac – what if the most dangerous thing on a picturesque road trip was sitting beside you in the car all along? A loved one, betrayed and broken, who wanted to bite back?

Not that you’d know any of that was percolating in my head from the happy holiday snaps I came home with – just goes to show the scariest and most uncharted regions are the wild places inside a writer’s head.

Thank you SO much to Bev for sharing such stunning insights into this fabulous part of the world. It is now more than definitely on my bucket list to visit.

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