The Darker Side of Wombourne
Updated: Oct 17
I’ve lived in Wombourne for many years and watched the village grow and change around me. New houses have appeared, roads have become busier and familiar places have altered, but it has never quite lost that sense of being a village, somewhere people recognise one another, where routines feel familiar and where life, on the surface at least, seems reassuringly ordinary.
That was what first made me wonder what would happen if something disturbed it.
What if a serious crime exposed a side of Wombourne that nobody knew was there? What if old secrets began to surface? How would a close community react when suspicion moved from stranger to neighbour, and the places people passed every day suddenly felt different?
That question eventually became part of the inspiration for the DC Rowe Mysteries.
A village made for crime fiction
Wombourne works for me because it isn’t an obvious crime setting. That is precisely the attraction. The village centre, the canal, old railway paths, nearby woodland and familiar residential streets all have an everyday quality that makes them more unsettling when placed inside a crime story.
I’ve always liked the idea that darkness in fiction is more effective when it appears somewhere readers instinctively believe should be safe.
Beyond Wombourne
The series spreads beyond the village into the wider South Staffordshire landscape — Himley, Baggeridge, Kingsford, Kinver and other places I know well. Some locations are used directly, others are adapted, but the atmosphere comes from the real area.
Woods can feel completely different when the light begins to fade. A canal towpath can become strangely isolated. A quiet road can suddenly feel too quiet. Those are the moments I notice as a writer.
What happens when the familiar changes?
At the heart of it, that is what interests me most. Not simply murder, but what crime does to a place.
How quickly do neighbours begin to look at one another differently? How long can old secrets remain buried? What happens to a community when the idea of safety is damaged?
In the DC Rowe Mysteries, Wombourne is more than a backdrop. It is part of the tension.
If You Go Down to the Woods is the first DC Rowe Mystery, with Silent Waters following it. Both begin with a simple idea: take somewhere familiar, disturb it, and see what rises to the surface.
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