Why I chose Teesside for Raine Kelly
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My family comes from Middlesbrough, so when I started thinking about a new detective series, Teesside felt like a place I wanted to write about.
There was plenty to draw me in. Saltburn has the pier and the beach, with the cliff rising behind them. Redcar has the long seafront and the racecourse. Then there’s the steelworks site, the hills further inland and Roseberry Topping, which has one of those shapes you can spot from miles away.
I didn’t want the books to be interchangeable stories that happened to have Teesside place names dropped into them. The setting needed to affect the cases and the people living through them.
In The Tide Line Girls, the sea is part of the investigation from the beginning. In The Burning Ground, the discovery of a body on the old steelworks site brings questions about the past back to a family who have lived with uncertainty for years. The Lost Boy takes Raine inland, to a search on Roseberry Topping.
Raine belongs there too. She knows the coast, she has family nearby, and she goes into the North Sea all year round. I’m not sure I’d be joining her in December, but she seems quite happy with a flask of tea afterwards.
These are fictional crimes and characters, and I’ve taken some liberties for the stories. But I hope the books give a sense of the places around them, especially for readers who know the area.