The Shadows of Hawthorn Vale
The Heritage Crime Files, book 1
A veteran reporter is found dead in an abandoned manor house, and a Norfolk village's secrets begin to surface.
East Anglia
Village mysteries set in Norfolk
Round-towered churches, lost manor houses and villages with long memories: the county where the Heritage Crime Files begin.
The real Norfolk
Norfolk has more round-tower churches than any other county: around 126 of them, most built from flint because the county had little other stone. Many stand in villages that have shrunk to a few houses, or out in fields where a village used to be.
It is a county of large estates and old families, of boundaries that were drawn centuries ago and are still argued over, and of manor houses that have outlived the money that built them.
Heritage crime, the damage and theft that strips old places of their value, is taken seriously here, because there is so much heritage to lose.
In the books
Hawthorn Vale is invented, but it could be any of a dozen Norfolk villages. In The Shadows of Hawthorn Vale, a veteran reporter is found dead in an abandoned manor house just before he can hand over evidence about a heritage charity, and DI Harcourt and DS Redgrave arrive to find a village that would rather they hadn't.
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