“It is 1940. War casts a bleak shadow over Essex. Rural life is transformed on the Dengie Peninsula as German bombers blacken the sky and the British military builds coastal defences against the fearful prospect of Nazi invasion.
Edwin Craugh and his friends endeavour to stay in good spirits, despite news of the Führer’s merciless dominance in Europe. But a gruesome discovery reveals that peril has already reached the Dengie shores and treachery is close at hand.
Armed only with the Marshlander’s natural wariness of strangers, Edwin investigates. As he stumbles upon a terrifying enemy plot in the Dengie landscape, devastating events unfold which will change the young man’s life forever.”
I wanted to write a book set during the Second World War for some time. I presumed it would be an action thriller in the tradition of Jack Higgins and Alistair MacLean. How wrong I was! In truth, I was rather nervous about the amount of research such a novel would entail. But then I had the idea for BENEATH DEAD OAKS.
In fact the outlines for both books in the series arrived at once, but it all started with a photograph I’d taken of the oak trees featured in the second book. The photo inspired the title, but at that stage I had no story in mind. And then, in the early hours during one sleepless night, the plots presented themselves in my thoughts.
I was still working on the RYAN KERREK novels at the time, so I couldn’t start on the new books right away. But I let the ideas develop and figured out how the two-part story would unfold. I still ended up doing a lot of research. Real events and real people are woven into the storyline (with a little creative licence).
BENEATH DEAD OAKS, although presented at a gentler pace than my spy series, is a conspiracy thriller at heart. Edwin Craugh is drawn into events and changed irrevocably by them. However, unlike most thrillers, the goal is not to surprise but to offer clues and encourage the reader to work out how they align at the end.
The narrator in this book is Edwin himself. The commentary informs us about the changes to rural life and the military operations during 1940 on the Dengie Peninsula, thereby setting the stage for the story. For more on the dialect, locations and historical events, see the EDWIN’S ESSEX page.
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