Murder at St Cedds
The Lanternlight Cases, book 1
An archivist falls from a bell tower during Evensong with a fragment of fifteenth-century manuscript in his hand.
Somerset
Crime fiction set in Wells, Somerset
England's smallest city, a cathedral that has been holding itself up for seven hundred years, and the patch of DI Eleanor Brand.
The real Wells
Wells is usually called the smallest city in England: a market town of a few streets gathered round one of the great medieval cathedrals. It feels like a place where everyone knows everyone, and where the cathedral sees most of it.
Inside the cathedral are the scissor arches, two great inverted arches set beneath the central tower in the 1330s when it began to sink. They were an emergency repair, and they have held ever since.
A few minutes' walk away is Vicars' Close, built between 1348 and the early fifteenth century to house the cathedral's choir, and said to be the oldest street in Europe still lined with its original houses. People live in them today.
Beside the cathedral stands the Bishop's Palace, ringed by a moat, where the swans have been trained for generations to ring a bell when they want feeding.
In the books
St Cedd's is invented, but its city isn't. The Lanternlight Cases begin here, with a death in a bell tower during Evensong and a detective raised in a vicarage who knows exactly how politely a cathedral can close ranks.
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More places from the books
Bath · Salisbury · Norfolk · Bodmin Moor · The Fens · The Gwent Levels · Pendle Hill