Talking Location with author J M Hewitt – Scheveningen

4th January 2020

#TalkingLocationWith … J M Hewitt, author of Reckoning Point, set in Scheveningen.

On the numerous occasions that I visited Scheveningen I wasn’t sure if it was the place to set a murder mystery. From the beautiful sandy beach, to the kind and friendly locals, a murder – let alone a serial killer – didn’t seem to fit in this idyllic place.

However, on my second visit I took a train from Schiphol and inadvertently got off too early. I looked around to try and pinpoint where I was, but it was midnight and too dark to even see the station signage. The platform wasn’t even a real platform, just a strip of concrete. A pathway, filled with overgrown weeds, discarded drug-taking paraphernalia and heavily graffitied walls. All hidden just behind the sparkling veneer of the well-to-do beach front location.

Suddenly, I could easily see this place as a crime fiction novel setting.

Many of my books use real life incidents as inspiration, and so I set about finding the perfect murder that had occurred to use. This proved harder than I ever thought possible. Nothing bad happens in Scheveningen! It really is the perfect place, and I began to have second thoughts. Maybe that perfection wasn’t just a veneer after all. Maybe this utopia really was a paradise.

But I dug deep, and sure enough, nestled in the newspaper’s archives, Scheveningen had experienced a murder. And not just any murder; this one was horrific.

Twenty years ago, one of those beachfront apartments was the selling place for a huge variety of drugs. The sellers were two Irish brothers and their friend. However, it seems as though they stepped on the toes of some gangsters pretty high up. In the apartment that overlooked the idyllic beach, the three were tortured and eventually, murdered. When the police broke into the place they found the charred remains of the three individuals. The bathroom was riddled with bullet holes and the Irish men had clearly been shot to death. The gas taps had been left on by the perpetrator, hoping to cause an explosion that would bring down the apartment block and conceal the shootings. When this failed, the three friend’s bodies were set on fire.

During my next visit I learned about the Atlantikwall, initially a defence line built to protect the beach front from the advancing Germans during the Second World War. What could be better for use in my crime fiction novel than a complex series of bunkers and creepy, interconnecting tunnels?

I was also overjoyed that readers who had read Exclusion Zone wanted to know what happened next to private detective Alex Harvey, and his side-kick Elian. At the end of Exclusion Zone, Elian was full of rage that Lev, her Ukrainian persecutor, had escaped, and to ensure justice was done she left the safety of London, and her tentative new relationship with Alex, and followed Lev to Holland. In Reckoning Point we pick up where Exclusion Zone left off, with Alex frantically trying to find Elian, and Elian determined to locate Lev. Unwittingly, all three of them are pulled into the murderous clutches of a mysterious man, known only as The Colonel, and a serial killer, who is seemingly out of control in his desperate need to clean up the streets of Scheveningen.

My novel, Reckoning Point, uses the history of Scheveningen to its fullest potential, and I hope my readers enjoy discovering a bit more about the history of this small Dutch town, and following Alex and Elian’s adventures once more.

Thank you so much to the author for sharing the backstory of her new book Reckoning Point, set in Scheveningen.

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