Scene of the Crime

Great writers of crime fiction not only create memorable detective heroes, they also firmly establish them in a setting. The home counties town of King's Markham, for example, is the perfect patch for Ruth Rendell's Inspector Wexford and Ellis Peter's Brother Cadfael is as inseparable from the cloisters of medieval Shrewsbury as John Harvey's D.I. Resnick is from the mean streets of modern Nottingham.