An award-winning North East author is set to take readers to isolated areas of Northumberland and Iceland in her latest novel.
Mari Hannah's Black Fell is the fourth in her Stone and Oliver series, and arrives after a four-year gap. Mari, who has won several awards including the Crime Writers' Association's Dagger in the Library, will see her protagonists investigating a case which begins on the shores of Kielder Reservoir.
In a novel that she has been choreographing since introducing David Stone and Frankie Oliver, Mari aims to add a combination of history and folklore into a police procedural. Speaking to ChronicleLive, Mari said that she started with the location and went from there.
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Of Kielder, Mari said: "Well, it's one of my favourite places in the world to be honest and I've spent a lot of time up there. I needed an isolated location and there's nothing better really than Kielder Water for that.
"This book is slightly different from the previous ones as it's steeped in history and the stuff of folklore. The reservoir flooded the village of Plashetts in 1982 and the book opens with these Icelandic students who are camping, they see a barrel in the water, they smash it open and shrink back in horror when they discover skeletal remains inside."
However, rather than remaining in Northumberland, Mari's duo travel further afield than in previous novels, with this the first Stone and Oliver mystery to take place in two locations. She continued: "In this book, and the next, which I'm currently writing, I needed to separate the two characters so I chose another isolated area which I absolutely love - Iceland.
"There are areas in Northumberland where you can drive or walk for a very long time before you see anyone else. You see little isolated cottages dotted around and there was a parallel there between the two locations and that's really what I wanted."
Also the author of the Kate Daniels series, Black Fell is Mari's 14th book since her debut The Murder Wall in 2012. However, she never set off to become a writer.
After being assaulted in her role as a probation officer and subsequently leaving the profession, she wondered what she would do next. She said: "The thing I knew most about was my own job as a probation officer, I knew courts, I knew police, I knew prison.
"My partner is an ex-detective inspector on a murder squad so between us we have a lot of experience, that influences me and also helps me. A lot of the research I do is chatting plotlines through with Mo (who Black Fell is dedicated to) to keep the authenticity.
"But because it's crime fiction I need to bend the rules slightly. I don't get them to break the law, but they go out of their comfort zone once in a while!"
Mari's string of awards and the success of her previous books show her novels have found a huge audience She finished: "Lots of readers have been waiting for this one for a while because there were two Kate Daniels books in between (the third and fourth Stone and Oliver novels).
"I want to give readers what they've been waiting for basically. There are lots of different layers to this book and I think this is going to keep readers turning the pages - at least that's what my hope is."
Black Fell by Mari Hannah comes out on June 22 and is published by Orion. Mari will be doing an event at Forum Books in Corbridge on June 21, with tickets available through Ticketsource.
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