Essex, my home county, lies on the North Sea coast of England. It is a neighbour to London and the rural counties of East Anglia. THE FATE OF EDWIN CRAUGH and BENEATH DEAD OAKS are set in a lightly fictionalised version of Essex’s Dengie Peninsula. Read on for more about the places, the people and the dialect of the books.

Dengie (pronounced den-jee) serves as both a village name and the name of the region. The latter is usually referred to as The Dengie to distinguish it from the former. The Dengie Hundred was the entire ancient administrative area; the Dengie Peninsula usually refers to the river-bound eastern half of this corner of Essex.

In the novels I have mixed real village names with fictional ones, although the distinction is not quite that simple. In some cases I have used old names for villages on and around the Dengie, such as Cock Lark (now nonsensically Cock Clarks) and Paklesham (now Paglesham), using John Cary’s 1793 Essex map as my source.

I also used a number of fictional village names from the works of Samuel Levy Bensusan, who wrote many short stories based on 19th- and 20th-century Essex characters and locations. Very little literature has been written about Essex life; Bensusan’s works are therefore invaluable records of a lost time, despite their fictional nature.

My appropriation of Bensusan’s names is seen in Mudford, Meadowbank and others, but my assignment of these location names does not match his. In fact it is not always possible to work out where he meant. I kept Maldon correctly named due to its significance in my books; Bensusan called the town Market Waldron.

There is only one location in my stories whose name does not have a historical or literary connection to Essex: Studley Hamlet. This is a tribute of a different sort. Thriller readers will remember that Jack Higgins set THE EAGLE HAS LANDED in a fictional Norfolk village called Studley Constable.

The second book in the EDWIN CRAUGH series is a World War II story; a link to Higgins’s classic novel seemed fitting, particularly as surreptitious infiltration is a theme in his book and mine. I also used Studley Hamlet to add a little mystery to the site of the dead oaks. They do exist and can be found with a little research and exploration.

The novels include both real and made-up landmarks. The decommissioned nuclear power station at Bradwell-on-Sea and the neighbouring wind farm are eyesores upon an otherwise intriguing and pleasant landscape. Salt marsh is a dominant feature around the Dengie, making the Essex coast a great area for wildlife.

Twizzlefoot Wood, which I based loosely on Dartmoor’s Wistman’s Wood, does not exist, although the name comes from a bridge near Burnham-on-Crouch which can be found on an Ordnance Survey map. The disused railway line which Edwin and Will visit in THE FATE OF EDWIN CRAUGH can still be accessed in places.

The dialect of the region is attempted in both stories. It is, sadly, all but extinct in this part of Essex. I have a childhood memory of hearing the accent in Maldon. It was too long ago to recall the context, but I had a conversation with a shopkeeper who pronounced the German car manufacturer Audi as aw-dee.

Dengie Essex is a mix of rustic long vowels (as above) and strongly clipped ones. You is usually written in the books as ye (except when given emphasis), and pronounced as a short yer or yuh (not yee). Similarly, you’ve, your, you’re, you’ll and you’d become ye’ve, y’r, ye’re, ye’ll and ye’d to reflect the trimming of the vowel sounds.

The pronunciation of many other words will hopefully be clear from the use of apostrophes or modified spellings. A handful of dialectal words also appear in the novels, such as mullicky for foggy. Their meanings should be apparent from the context. The language of the region is as important to the stories as the landscape.

Including accents and dialectal vocabulary was only possible by referring primarily to Bensusan’s stories and also the ESSEX DIALECT DICTIONARY compiled by Edward Gepp (first published in 1923). Bensusan masterfully captured the cadence and accents of rural Essex voices, as well as their natural suspicion of furriners.

And what of the people in the books? Well, Edwin Craugh (his surname should be pronounced as craw) is not based on anyone I ever knew, but he was partly inspired by an Enid Blyton character called Tammylan. I wanted a protagonist who had an affinity with nature and represented an era and way of life that are lost to us forever.

THE FATE OF EDWIN CRAUGH mentions some real people. The story about Sidney Tiffin finding parts of murder victim Stanley Setty’s body in the marsh is true. Other names which have local relevance are newsagent Stanley Taylor, local benefactor William Alexander, and Byrhtnoth who fought and died at the Battle of Maldon.

The chapter in BENEATH DEAD OAKS featuring Hurricane fighter pilot Václav Bergman is based on a true event. Bergman survived the war and later conflicts. He died in Scotland on New Year’s Eve in 2002. Walter Linnett (his surname is often incorrectly written as Linnet) was a famous wildfowler who lived near Bradwell-on-Sea.

While the EDWIN CRAUGH books are linked to the thriller genre by plot structure, it was just as important to make them about the Essex landscape and wildlife, local history and dialect, and even some folklore. I hope that readers (particularly those in Essex) will enjoy these stories as something a little different from my usual writing style.