Lingering EFFECTS

There’s a scrap of beach by the River Thames in Hammersmith where, in my 2013 thriller The Detective’s Daughter on the 27 July 1981, three-year-old Jack Harmon plays with his toy steam engine. Jack glances back up to the river steps to check his mother is watching him. But in the searing heat, Kate Rokesmith lies murdered beneath a slime-stained supporting wall beyond which are long back gardens. After this, Jack’s life will never be as happy.

This beach is where twenty years earlier in 1961, the tide was recently out and – like Jack, aged three – I got stuck in gloopy mud at the water’s edge. My dad hauled me out, leaving my Wellington boots behind. A scary experience at the time and, while hardly on a par with Jack losing his mother, did sow the seed for the opening scene in the novel.

In 2021, photographer Michael White shot pictures of me on this beach for his developing project on writers whose books have been influenced by the Thames. That too was during a hot July day, the sun beating down and, like that morning in 1981,