Travel to the setting of The Dying Squad by Adam Simcox

Submitted: 26th July 2021

The Lincolnshire of the Dying Squad

Travel to the setting of The Dying Squad by Adam Simcox – Adam Simcox, author of The Dying Squad has invited you all to a lovely tour around the locations of his latest novel. However, the Lincolnshire of this story has supernatural, time travel and ghostly vibes as you will soon see…..

BookTrail the locations in The Dying Squad

The Lincolnshire featured in my debut novel The Dying Squad is a vicious, bleak, uncompromising place, full of cutthroat county lines gangs, endless, cloud filled skies, and murder lurking round every hedgerow. Thankfully, the Lincolnshire I grew up in is very different to the Lincolnshire depicted in the book, but it features many real life locations. Let’s start with a nice one:

BookTrail the locations in The Dying Squad

Travel to the setting of The Dying Squad by Adam Simcox

Lincolnshirewolds (c) Wikiepedia

The Wolds

The cliches regarding Lincolnshire’s flatness are mostly accurate, but the Wolds swerves that flatness. A series of low range hills that run roughly parallel with the North Sea coast, the views from the wolds winding country roads are genuinely spectacular, and feature heavily at the conclusion of The Dying Squad. They’re as treacherous as they are beautiful in the winter.

Travel to the setting of The Dying Squad by Adam Simcox

Alford (c) Wikipedia

Alford

The small market town of Alford isn’t mentioned specifically in The Dying Squad, but it was the source of inspiration when Joe Lazarus, our hero, attends his own funeral (unseen by the living church goers). Alford — and in particular, St Wilfrid’s church — has been the scene of some of the biggest events of my life; I buried my mum there, attended by brothers wedding there, and had my oldest son christened there. It was difficult to imagine anywhere else, when depicting Joe’s return to the living world.

BookTrail the locations in The Dying Squad

Anderby Breek (c) Wikipedia

Anderby

When Joe’s deep into investigating his own murder, he comes across a beach café in Anderby Creek, a small village right next to the sea. I grew up in Anderby village, roughly a five minute drive from the Creek, and people always think I’m exaggerating when I tell them how remote it was. Home to roughly 200 people, Anderby didn’t have pavements, street lights, or a single shop, except for the beach café, which was closed in the winter. It was beautifully isolated; whether you thought that was a good thing or not was done to you.

BookTrail the locations in The Dying Squad

Skegness (c) Wikipedia

Skegness/Mablethorpe

I freely admit I have a love/hate relationship with the seaside towns of Skegness and Mablethorpe. One thing I unreservedly love is the rich material they provide for Joe, and his ghostly partner Daisy-May to investigate Joe’s own murder. Whether it’s the crumbling seafront, shrieking, past their prime arcades, or the general sense of a place gone to seed (all factors I ramped up for the sake of dramatic tense) there’s still a sense of fierce civic pride that I find admirable, and that’s what I instilled in Joe’s character; this is his home, and he’ll be damned if he’s going to see it run into the ground by drugs gangs.