Paul Charles

Last Boat to Camden Town

The Do-Not Press, 1998.

The morning was sharp - he could see his breath before him, but at least it was dry. Kennedy never tired of the beauty of Primrose Hill, particularly on such early morning walks. The sky was a powerful blue and the green and brown colours of the hill combined to create his personal living picture-postcard. He felt very privileged to live where he did...His normal route to the office took him past Cumberland Basin. This morning, there were no signs whatever that twenty-four hours earlier, a man had lost (or maybe taken) his life there

The office is 'CID Camden Town', and Detective Inspector Christy Kennedy is trying to work out how and why the body of Edmund Berry ended up in Regent's Canal. (Primrose Hill's most famous murder victim, found dead in a ditch some three hundred years earlier, was named Edmund Berry Godfrey - see the Jeremy Potter entry - but the DI seems to be unaware of this.) Kennedy is a Primrose Hill resident himself and most of the story takes place in this small section of north London, described with affection and a wealth of local colour. It's not all roses though, as Detective Sergeant Irvine reports:

Sorry to be a bit late. I've been otherwise engaged up on Primrose Hill this morning...some nutter was sniping at dogs from the high-rise flats. He killed four of the pets before we managed to disarm him...Apparently, he was fed up with going out for a walk on the hill every morning and ending up with dog-shit on his shoes.

Maybe it's the owners he should have been after, not the dogs

Fountain of Sorrow

The Do-Not Press, 1998.

If he were to be alone tonight then he wanted to spend some of the time wandering around Primrose Hill, a ramble he never tired of. As he walked up the hill the sun was going down, nearly gone and it looked quite spooky. There was an orange haze backlighting the hill and it picked up the silhouettes of fifteen or so people wandering aimlessly around the crown. It caught the trees in a similar manner and made the hill seem more like a scene from a Hitchcock movie than sunset on London's most beautiful park

Another puzzle for DI Kennedy: who is responsible for the mutilated corpses accumulating around the fountain - 'the one with the bronze statue of a washerwoman on top of it' - near Gloucester Gate, Regent's Park? Once again most of the story takes place in the Camden Town area, described in loving detail.

The Ballad of Sean and Wilko

The Do-Not Press, 2000.

The greenness and freshness of Primrose Hill and neighbouring Regent's Park was as spiritual as any countryside. Kennedy was surprised but not disappointed that more Londoners chose not to sample these life-enriching sights. Such a soulful experience would set up even the most sceptical of persons for the trials and tribulations of their imminent day in the office or their job of work, whatever it may be. Even on the wettest of winter mornings two magpies had elected to greet him

The Detective Inspector's day in the office will start, he hopes, with the autopsy results on Wilko Robertson, a 70's rock musician found dead in Dingwall's Dancehall at the start of what was meant to be a comeback tour. Another Camden Town mystery waits to be resolved.

I've Heard the Banshee Sing

The Do-Not Press, 2002.

The sun was going down and a fiery red sky was adding a perfect light to the distinctive London skyline, in its own way as breathtakingly beautiful as any of Woody Allen's Manhattan scenes. There was a power present, an indefinable power but a power nonetheless, which was probably at the root of what drove Kennedy

This sets the scene for five pages of dialogue on Primrose Hill but most of the action takes place in Ireland, where Kennedy and assorted characters unravel another murder mystery.

The Hissing of the Silent Lonely Room

The Do-Not Press Limited, 2001.

He heard Esther's singing voice in his head as he walked over Primrose Hill. It looked so beautiful this morning. The early morning unused air was clean, clear and sharp, and he found it made his mind remarkably clear and sharp as well. Focused. He found it so easy to focus this morning. Even the early morning dog owners, aiding and abetting their animals to soil this wonderful space, weren't going to annoy him this morning

Another puzzle for the DI: who murdered Esther at her flat at '123 Fitzroy Road, literally a two-minute walk from Primrose Hill'? Suspects are questioned in Kentish Town and Park Village West, and once again the story provides a detailed portrait of the area around Camden Town.

Sweetwater

Dingle: Brandon, 2006.

Kennedy, in his recuperating periods, would often go for walks in Regent's Park. He loved the sensation of feeling lost while literally in the centre of one of the busiest cities in the world...For Kennedy the compulsive people watcher, the Honest Sausage was one of his favourite spots to indulge in this non-physical sport. The thing about a cafe in the middle of Regent's Park is that it tends not to be frequented by what you would call regulars, but more by a lot of what you would call out-of-towners

DI Christy Kennedy has more on his mind than people-watching; a local man has gone missing and there are few clues as to his whereabouts. Later a corpse is discovered, but it only complicates matters.

If Kennedy had realized just how hectic Wednesday morning was going to be, he would have savoured his early morning walk over Primrose Hill just a wee bit more. Perhaps he would even have dallied a tad longer to enjoy NW1's most famous patchwork quilt - a pure blue of the sky, the expansive greens of the hill and the hints of brown on the hill's one hundred and fifty-nine leafy grand masters - as the autumn started to declare its intentions

There are earlier scenes on Primrose Hill and another one in Regent's Park before the final one on Primrose Hill; where the reader, though not the DI, discovers what happened to the missing man.

The Beautiful Sound of Silence

Brandon, 2008.

He had all his team out walking the circumference of Primrose Hill, searching for a location where David Peters could have been hidden during the time between his disappearance and the early hours of the following morning, when, under a cloak of darkness, his body, assumingly drugged, was placed in the bonfire...They couldn't have picked a better day for a search; it was blustery but the sky was blue, and occasional bursts of sunshine showed off the hill at its magnificent best. The best, that was, except for the rubble and ash and burnt-out log stumps that now served as a sad reminder of what had occurred four nights ago

Despite a plethora of witness statements DI Christy Kennedy's team haven't much to go on concerning the Guy Fawkes night horror when the crowds of onlookers heard 'excruciating, ear-splitting wailing...originating from within the flames of the giant fire'. A few nights later a mysterious phone call sends Kennedy racing down to the canal.

He skipped down the steep slope and would have run straight into the canal were it not for the high railing at the bottom...
The cavernous thunder of his shoes pounding on the towpath under the bridge disturbed the dead silence of night. By the time he was running under Regent's Park Road, he was struggling to catch his breath...In what seemed like a lifetime but was only a minute and a half, he covered the remaining 100 yards to ann rea's houseboat, with its circus colours

The denouement is played out aboard the houseboat in the final pages of the book.