Crime thriller set in AMSTERDAM
Talking Location With author James Henry – ESSEX
6th July 2021
TalkingLocationWith … James Henry, author of Whitethroat set in Colchester, Essex.
When writing prequels to RD Wingfield’s Jack Frost books some years ago, I was often asked about the difficulties I faced imagining another writer’s characters. What rarely came up was how I coped with his fictional town, Denton. There was no map to reference; Denton lived purely in Wingfield’s mind. (Although for FIRST FROST at the request of the publisher we did create a map of Denton to help).
I often thought how much easier it would be to write about the places I knew, here in north Essex. That was the genesis for the Lowry novels: the locations came before the characters. Most of the people who populate these books are from Colchester and its environs. My lead character Lowry lives in the village of Great Tey, a few doors down from his local pub.
Currently there are three books in the series, each one loosely rooted to different aspects of Essex. Blackwater focusses on the coast and Mersea Island; Yellowhammer, the countryside villages of Kelvedon and Coggeshall; and in Whitethroat we’re right in Colchester town itself.
Mersea Island on the Blackwater Estuary is perhaps most popular for its beach at West Mersea and, famously, for its oysters. Historically though, it was known for smuggling. The Coastguard had a lookout point on Monkey Beach (rumoured to be unflatteringly named after the guards who manned the tower). Though busy in high season, over the winter months the main West Mersea beach is mostly deserted and I find that it’s easy to imagine furtive going-ons such as those I wrote about in Blackwater:
Yellowhammer is set in Coggeshall and the neighbouring villages of Kelvedon and Feering. The story starts with a discovery on the railway track and ends on the railway crossing near Kelvedon church. In the eighties when the books are set, the area was a bustling centre for antiques, but today most of the shops have vanished and the streets often eerily silent.
In Whitethroat, the third book, the core action takes places in the High Street, with a duel fought between two soldiers outside a soon-to-be-opened night club. The duellists meet on the steps of the town hall under the watchful eye of the statue of St Helena.
Colchester is fortunate to have resisted urban sprawl, and it is surrounded by beautiful countryside and timeless villages such as Rowhedge and Wivenhoe on either side of the River Colne, which also make an appearance in Whitethroat. I also take my readers to lesser known places such as Alphamstone in the Stour Valley, and the stunning church at Copford, but these I am unable to do justice with a photo.
Essex still holds vast fascination for me as writer. There is so much more I want to explore. I fancy travelling back to south Essex where I was born and where, on wet Saturday afternoons, I would get the bus to Basildon market and go hunting for seven inch singles, similar to the ones Lowry would listen to . . . As it happens, RD Wingfield himself lived in nearby Pitsea, and although geographically the Frost books are imagined to be somewhere in the west county towards Bath, I have always thought that Wingfield modelled Denton on Basildon, a new town with which he would be familiar. Perhaps Essex influenced us both in different guises.
James Henry
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James Henry’s description about the Norman church at Copfield can’t be right. You would not have a flayed Dane nailed to the door of a Norman church. The timing is wrong. Great book though