Читать книгу Howdunit - Группа авторов - Страница 29

Where should you set your crime story? Somewhere you know intimately? Or somewhere far distant that you know much less well but find fascinating? As usual with writing, there are few if any hard and fast rules.

The ideas for most of P. D. James’ stories sprang from particular places, often parts of her beloved East Anglia. One evening on Dunwich beach, she pictured a small dinghy drifting, oarless, and bearing a neatly dressed corpse whose hands were severed at the wrists. This striking image was the genesis of her third novel, Unnatural Causes. Even in Innocent Blood, where for once the starting point was not a location, the London Underground, the streets of the capital, and ‘the darkly numinous roof of Westminster Cathedral’ are all integral to the narrative.