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

Peak District covered brilliantly by Stephen Booth's "Cooper and Fry" series. Would recommend.

Great thread! Someone already made a map look! traceybooklover.wordpress.com/2015/01/02/have-they-got-you-covered-crime-fiction-map-of-the-uk/

Has anyone said Suffolk?

I don't know anything about crime fiction but my FIL used to write crime fiction in his retirement!

Has the Cotswolds been done?

A fantastic summer read while sunbathing at the Lido

I don't know, I've never been there

George Gently was set in Norfolk in the books. Not sure why it was moved to the North East for TV. It's rather greedy to wipe out two areas in one!
Grantchester must rule out Cambridge.

Orkney, Kent and Lincolnshire look like the obvious gaps on that map.

Orkney would be good to carry on the 'unfeasibly high fictional murder rate when in real life it's one of the lowest crime places to live' theme, with none of the local police used to dealing with such events.

Or you have someone like a Met police officer who moved there for a quiet life after being traumatised by stabbings and terrorism in London and ends up dealing with a serial killer when they imagined they'd be helping relocate lost sheep or dealing with tourists who've set up camp in passing places.

There are lots of visitors who go there for the archaeology (I know someone who did all his fieldwork for his degree there) and the scuba diving (one of the most popular UK sites due to the WW1 battleship wrecks) so your suspect could be someone who visits for one of these reasons and just happens to bump someone off while they're there before disappearing, until next time......

Write that OP and I'd read it. Plus Orkney would be an amazing place to live while you do your research and write your book.