Humour me. When I become the next big thing in crime fiction...

[SodOffbacktoaibu]

Just had a lovely bath listening to my guilty pleasure that is LJ Ross's DCI Ryan books. ...

I'm thinking it'd be a lovely retirement gig writing detective novels.... So where can I set my fictional detective series...?

Everywhere is taken isn't it?

L j Ross has nicked my home area of Durham to Northumberland

We've got Vera too.

Shetland is taken obviously.

Grace has covered Brighton.

Edinburgh is Rebus

There's that other one in the fens..

Help me fill in the blanks and I'll see where's left for me to move to for research before I knock out my million selling bestsellers and take the crime fiction world by storm

Huge potential!

Sherlock Holmes has one set there ("The Cardboard Box") and a couple in nearby Norwood.

The Isle of Man?

The Seaside Detective Agency by J C Williams was isle of man lol

@GentlemanJohnny
Oh. Well, like I say no lack of crime!!!

Also some of Val McDermid books too.

Isle of Man would be a good one as it could join all those other places where the real life murder toll is just about zero (Shetland, Iceland, Hebrides, not mentioned on this thread but Peter May wrote a few crime fiction books set there, Channel Islands) but the fictional rate is sky high.

Great idea for a thread OP, I've picked up a few new authors to look out for.

AA Dhand has done Bradford/West Yorkshire
JR Ellis is Harrogate based/North Yorkshire
David J Gatward is set in Swaledale/Wensleydale

Simon Whaley has a series set in the fictitious Borderlandshire, based on Shropshire/Herefordshire.

George Bellairs (a pseudonym) set many of his Littlejohn books on the Isle of Man. They were published from the 1940s on.

Martin Edwards has a series of murder mysteries set in the Lake District.

Allie Shenton series is set in Stoke on Trent so sorry thats gone too

@deeplybaffled
I've just looked it up as I couldn't remember the author but the Wirral ones are by J E Mayhew about DCI Will Blake .

@SodOffbacktoaibu

I would be interested in a series set in Cornwall . I looked for one once when I went on holiday there and the only one I could find was so bad I had to give up after a couple of chapters. (And I read a lot of rubbish so that's saying something!)

Rom com writer here that lives in Ireland and wishes I lived in Cornwall because that is the gold standard setting for rom coms!! Only thing I’d say is if you don’t pick a fictional area make sure you study it to high heaven and know every alley every nook and cranny EVEN if you’re renaming. Once people decide they know the area they get very irritable if you decide to have eg the lead get from here to there in ten minutes and everyone knows traffic there means it takes half an hour😅

@stayathomer
I don't tend to read that genre any more but when I did, my favourite authors were always the Irish ones (Marion Keyes, Cathy Kelly and tons more!) I wonder who you are !

You are right that there are many of the Little Icecream Shop by the Sea type books set in Cornwall . There is obviously a market for Murder at The Little Icecream Shop by the Sea!

That's why I can't watch Vera or George Gently!

SodOffbacktoaibu

Read a uk author who wrote a book set in Ireland and she’d set the story in a county and kept saying about being in the west. It was very much down south and I couldn’t finish it!!!!

ShinyAppleDreamingOfTheSea
That would be a fab idea!!! Yes you wouldn’t know me (I wish I were one of those names😅) and just about hitting minimum wage after ten books, am more well known in ebook circles, although I am in some bookstores!!

When you are paid millions for the tv or film rights please make the main actor or actress not fake their accent no matter where it is set

Cornwall - WJ Burley ; detective Wycliffe.

Thank you - will look out for this .

Wycliffe! God that's a flashback.... Nineties TV I think.

Talking Telford: Taking a dip into the quaint history of Telford's famous timepiece | Shropshire Star

Portsmouth or Winchester.

Loads of material there for you as very old cities.

Murder in the KP snack factory! Who pushed Trevor into the mini cheddar deep fat fryer? Who made space raiders from Roger? The supervisor swaps her hairnet for a Sherlock style deer hunter hat and delves deep into a multi-pack of major crime investigation. A somewhat cheesy, yet salty read with a hint of onion powder.

Wallingford could be fun: Agatha Christie lived there and some of Midsummer Murders was filmed there so you could make arch references. Also it's a quiet market town with a Waitrose these days but had a big castle if you want to delve back historically.

Or what about abroad? Good excuse for a detailed fact-finding trip to the Arctic, Dordogne or Rhodes, say.