Castle Vale and Spitfire Island – The Real Birmingham Behind Deadly Origins
Castle Vale in Birmingham is home to the city's Jaguar car factory, and the factory and Spitfire Island right outside it are the setting for Deadly Origins, the prequel novella in my Detective Zoe Finch series. Here's why I wanted to write about the Birmingham Zoe grew up in, and a version of the city that was disappearing.
When is Deadly Origins set?
Deadly Origins takes you back to where Zoe's story starts. It's her first case after moving from uniform into CID, around eighteen years before Deadly Wishes. She's young, she's got something to prove, and Mo is there too. It's the first time the two of them work together, and you can already see the closeness that's going to hold for the next twenty years.
But the thing I enjoyed most was writing Birmingham as it was around the turn of the century.
Why Castle Vale and Spitfire Island?
The book is centred on the Jaguar factory at Castle Vale, and the crime takes place on Spitfire Island, right outside it.
That factory is very close to where I grew up. Not long after the book is set it came within a whisker of closing, and was only saved by a lot of local lobbying and a very good MP.
What about Longbridge?
I'd wanted to use Longbridge, where Zoe's dad worked on Austins and then Rovers when she was a girl, but by the time the story is set it had already gone.
The car industry is a huge part of Birmingham's story, and Deadly Origins let me write about a version of the city that was disappearing – places that simply aren't there any more by the time Zoe gets to the later books.
Real locations in Deadly Origins
The Jaguar factory at Castle Vale
Spitfire Island
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Ready for the series proper? It begins with Deadly Wishes.
