The Waterfall – set in various places

Submitted: 8th September 2025

The Waterfall

When a book plays with locations and stories in such a way as this one, it deserves a very unique kind of review…..

There are four parts of this book – four separate stories that do fit together but you’re not quite sure how until the end.

We start off in Shakespeare’s world where a certain Kit Marlowe, an adversary of Shakespeare, has just been found murdered…

Location map of The Waterfall

This world with its scene setting, ink wells and old wooden houses is evoked very well indeed. I was thrust back into a pair of breeches myself as I raced through this first section, eager to see how it would set the precedent for what was to follow…

What does follow is a a 19th century Gothic former Priory… and inside the priory, the world is dark and unsettling. There is a mystical edge here, a sense that something is hidden in the shadows…and there’s a book…

Holy Island priory

Location map of The Waterfall

Complete change with the next story as we head to Venice – there’s journeys up the river in a water taxi, over to the Lido and where we find that “history is full of cruel echoes”.

The Lido…

Location map of The Waterfall

From Venice, we head to our final destination…Venice Beach..

“The hotel was on Venice Beach. Venice – some property developers idea to turn an empty beachfront in Los Angeles into an Italian town by digging a few canals…”

Location map of The Waterfall

So, this take your fancy?

REVIEW

I am flabbergasted and don’t know how to review this book. I can’t say anything really without giving it away but what I would say is that you should READ IT and DEVOUR IT.

4 very separate stories that somehow intertwine until by the fourth, your head is ready to explode when the book The Turnkey (also written by Gareth) is mentioned.

I read each section in one go and if you can do that, I think it works as it keeps it all together and helps the stories to blend. There is LOTS of detail about Shakespeare and Marlowe and a very mysterious book. A murderer and an age old mystery. It’s a gothic tale, a modern one, a Shakespearean one. But the picture you get after reading all four? MIND BLOWN.

My mind is still tangled from reading this. It’s a work out for the brain but once you put the pieces together, well that is quite a moment. Currently standing on a plinth holding a medal and hugging a pic of the author haha.