It’s the phone call DI Jon Spicer has long feared – his wild younger brother has been found dead. He has been murdered and horribly mutilated. Aware Dave was involved in drugs, Jon had hoped to steer him away from his doomed and self-destructive fate. Full of anger, he heads to the town where Dave’s body was discovered, bent on finding the killer.
Meanwhile, Dave’s young girlfriend, Zoe, is trapped in an inner-city hell. Vulnerable, destitute and now alone, she is being hunted by the vicious criminal Dave owed money to.
Arriving in the Peak District, Jon finds a community with plenty to hide. With time running out and his distraught family cracking under the strain, Jon realises the truth of his brother’s death lies in two places: with a frightened girl trapped somewhere among Manchester’s tower-blocks and out on the bleak heights overlooking the secretive rural town.
This was, in many ways, a strange novel to write.
Parts of the plot had been floating around in my head for a while, waiting for the right story to come along. Without giving too much away, that includes the elusive egg-collector who, DI Spicer believes, is key to the investigation.
Egg-collectors – those strange individuals who scale trees and cliffs to strip the nests of rare birds – are a peculiarly British bunch. (A hang-over, apparently, from the days of empire when oologists would scour the territories collecting samples.) My research into these people led me to the RSPB’s chief investigation officer. He enlightened me as to how what often starts as a boyhood hobby often comes to exert a dark and all-consuming power over the collector’s life.
Part of the plot that evolved as I wrote the story was the plight of Zoe, the murder-victim’s girlfriend. I really liked the idea of having Jon believe there was a second character out there, who also appears key to the investigation. In Zoe’s case, she is trapped in a flat high up in a derelict tower block. With no phone, no neighbours and the estate’s gang trying to hunt her down, she is effectively a prisoner.
I called the book The Edge to hint at a central theme of the novel: heights. (Although the title also refers to DI Spicer’s increasingly precarious mental state as the pressure of the investigation builds.) Much of the action takes place dangerously close to some very big drops – and I hope the sense of vertigo leaves you hanging onto your seat as you read!