A tale of corruption and murder in HAMBURG
Talking Location With… Beverley Jones. Inspired by the dramatic scenery of the USA
21st April 2022
Talking Location With… Beverley Jones. Inspired by the dramatic scenery of the USA
Talking to Beverley Jones about how she was inspired to write by the sweeping vistas of the USA, whilst on holiday. Where will her next vacation take her?
Paperback release, 21 April 2022.
The beach house was perfect place to hide. Or so she thought . . .
When Grace Jensen returns to her home one day, she finds a body in a pool of blood and a menacing gift left for her.
The community of Lookout Beach is shocked by such a brutal intrusion in their close-knit neighbourhood – particularly to a family as successful and well-liked as the Jensens – and a police investigation to find the trespasser begins.
But Grace knows who’s after her. She might have changed her name and moved across the world, deciding to hide on the Oregon coast, but she’s been waiting seventeen years for what happened in the small Welsh town where she grew up to catch-up with her.
Grace might seem like the model neighbour and mother, but nobody in Lookout Beach – not even her devoted husband Elias – knows the real her. Or how much blood is on her hands.
Wilderness (The Perfect Break)
Two weeks, 1500 miles and three opportunities for her husband to save his own life. It wasn’t about his survival – it was about hers. 
Shattered by the discovery of her husband’s affair, Liv knows they need to leave the chaos of New York to try to save their marriage. Maybe the road trip that they’d always planned, exploring America’s national parks, just the two of them, would help heal the wounds. But what Liv hasn’t told her husband is that she has set him three challenges, three opportunities to prove he’s really sorry and worthy of her forgiveness.
And if he fails? Well, it’s dangerous out there. There are so many ways to die in the wilderness. And if it’s easy to die, then it’s easy to kill too. If their marriage can’t survive, maybe he can’t either.
Dangerous Ground
Dreaming of booking your summer holiday? Me too. Travel is a gift, isn’t it? The new sights and sounds, the sun and sea or whatever takes your fancy, the food, the holiday reading and, of course, the dozens of new opportunities to murder people. Well, not literally but wherever I’ve gone on holiday, something about my crime writer mind just finds inspiration for a new set of dark deeds. I think it’s the idea that a holiday can give us a break from our workaday selves as much as from our routines that gets me thinking – with space to breathe, how many things that we’ve been suppressing during the nine-to five, float to the surface? And who hasn’t had that moment where the first thing you seem to do when you get away is to have a row with your other half about the million little things that have been shredding your nerves for weeks?
Murderous Mileage
That’s why, from a wonderful road trip I took across the deserts and mountains of the USA, came the kernel of an idea for a very tortuous ‘dream’ holiday with a very unhappy couple. Standing on top of Glacier Point in Yosemite national park in California, surrounded by soaring limestone domes, peaks and ancient woodland, I envisaged a woman standing on a precipice, wondering if there was an alternative to divorcing her cheating husband. That moment turned into my psychological thriller, Wilderness, a Will-she? Won’t-she? journey of hundreds of miles and also into the depths and darkness of her own heart. I wasn’t sure if readers (or my agent and publisher) would warm to prickly, damaged Liv, but luckily, they did, as, miraculously, did the TV producers at Firebird Pictures who, in 2019, optioned the novel for a TV series now, finally, (after the Covid hiatus) in production with Amazon Prime.
Filming is due to start any day now, with the vistas of Canada standing in for the wilderness of California, the American mountains and the glamour of New York city.
After the shut-down-and-stay-at home endurance event of the last two years, I can’t wait to see my story getting ready for the screen, because, at heart, I’m still a little girl from the South Wales Valleys who can’t quite believe anyone is captivated by her stories.
Sinister Seascapes
While the wheels finally turn on the TV show, my new novel The Beach House is out in paperback now, another story inspired by a holiday to the US. The impetus behind my 2019 trip to Seattle, Portland and the Oregon Coast came from a long-held spark of wish fulfilment. As a kid I was captivated by the Steven Spielberg film, The Goonies, set in Cannon Beach and Astoria on the misty and dramatic Pacific Northwest coast.
After visiting the filming locations, playing pirates, getting our mugshots done like the villainous Fratelli brothers at the Astoria film museum and looking for buried treasure, a darker story started to form in my head. The wildness of the seascape contrasted with the quaint clapboard towns and gentrified villages made me think it would be a perfect place for someone to hide if they were fleeing a dreadful event in their past. Because sometimes trouble is brewing out there, where the mist rolls in from that vast dark ocean and you can trace the tsunami escape routes on the boards that flank the beaches for that day the sea might rise. So, when Grace comes home one day, she discovers someone has left her three little gifts in her kitchen, a rope, a knife and handcuffs. Oh, and there’s a body on the floor. Is this a home invasion gone wrong or has someone found out who Grace really is and what happened in the village across the Atlantic where she grew up?
Local Colour
The part of the story that deals with Grace’s teenage years features the wonderful tidal landscape around Ogmore in South Wales, with its sweeping beach, dinky Norman Castle and picture-perfect historic village of Merthyr Mawr and it’s ‘dipping bridge’ across the river. Rumours say a whole medieval village is buried beneath the vast dunes, that wreckers once lured sailing ships to their doom off nearby Dunraven and the ghost of a wronged maiden still roams the fields near Sker House, which inspired a novel by R D Blackmore who wrote Lorna Doone. Also integral to The Beach House, is the local legend of the sinister Cap Goch (or Red Cap) a landlord at a long-lost inn on the river. It’s believed that, in the late 18th Century, he murdered his guests, the packman, drovers and travellers heading for the then wool town of Bridgend, and dumped their bodies in the river or buried them in the inn’s garden. Half fascinated, half horrified by this story, I still spent many a happy summer tramping the sands along this coast, even trying my hand at surfing (badly) for a single summer, so it’s not always the far flung and exotic locations that foster an atmosphere of dread. Inspiration is everywhere.
I haven’t booked a holiday for this summer yet, but I suppose I should get a move on if I’m going to find the perfect location for my next novel. I’m thinking of a jaunt to the Lake District, where, no doubt, the landscapes that inspired the poetry of William Wordsworth and the delightful animal tales of Beatrix Potter will inspire me to new depths of murderous despair – I can’t wait!
Beverley Jones
Beverley Jones (B E Jones) is a former journalist and police press officer. She was born in a small village in the valleys of South Wales and worked as a print journalist with Trinity Mirror newspapers, before becoming a broadcast journalist with BBC Wales Today.
She also worked as a press officer and media manager for South Wales Police, participating in criminal investigations, security operations, counter terrorism and emergency planning. She channels these experiences of true crime, and her insight into the murkier side of human nature, into her dark, psychological thrillers.
Her most recent novels, Where She Went, Halfway, Wilderness and The Beach House are published by Little Brown. Wilderness was recently optioned by Firebird Pictures for development into a six-part Amazon Prime TV series, due to air in 2023.
You can follow Bev on Twitter and Instagram @bevjoneswriting
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I wonder if Beverley takes these “Busman’s Holidays” alone, or if she has very understanding travel companions!
A lovely post and great news abut the TV option! 🙂