Guide books are all very well, but a locally-set thriller is much more engaging. As I don't tend to travel far, this means my regional reading is more scattergun than most.
This habit started on a trip to Kircudbright more than twenty years ago. Tourism felt to be in its early stages, but as we drove through Dumfries and Galloway, it was still hard to avoid Five Red Herrings. As we visited the haunts of the Scottish colourists and learned about their work and legacy, I was embroiled in Dorothy L Sayers' atmospheric murder mystery. It brought life and death to a very unexpected bohemia and introduced me for the first time to Lord Peter Wimsey.
Since then, I seek out a local book - most often a thriller - when we are ducking about. My holiday reading doesn't enhance my shaky literary credentials. Some of the books Dorothy herself would label pot boilers. In Suffolk, A Southwold Mystery brought new intrigue to familiar sites. The Norfolk Mystery by Ian Sansom was the perfect choice for a trip to Blakeney. For Venice, a kindred spirit recommended Donna Leon.
Whitby has made the most of its Dracula connections and provided Bram Stoker with inspiration. Vampires - even when they are Edward Cullen played by Robert Pattinson - are a bit too scary for me. Instead, I was inspired to read Death at the Seaside for my Yorkshire break.
Of course, I am not alone. The Book Trail enables travellers to match their trip with their reading in a much more informed way than I can.
Travelling to Oxford today, Lord Peter Wimsey joined me for the first time in all those years, through the pages of Gaudy Night. I am full of anticipation. Harriet Walter's introduction describes his Lordship as
"an impossible combination of intellectual brilliance, blue-blood breeding and all-round atheticism, a piano-playing linguist, master of espionage and almost clairvoyant amateur sleuth".
But in Gaudy Night, I am promised, it is his feminist credentials that are thoroughly tested. I can't wait to see how that turns out.
Postscript: I bought Gaudy Night when a book I didn't get along with (All the Beautiful Lies by Peter Swanson) generously provided a list of the best campus crime novels. A fictitious fatherly gift for a son leaving for college, in an otherwise quite grisly read. But if campus crime is your thing, these may be worth a look.
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