The Rex & Eddie Mysteries series is set in the fictional town of Cloisterham, inspired by on the real town of Rochester; which is where I grew up. I stole the name from Charles Dickens who set The Mystery of Edwin Drood in Cloisterham, a lightly disguised Rochester.
He changed the names of a few things like Eastgate House which became Westgate House. So I did the same, turning the nearby Pentagon Shopping Centre into Octagon Shopping Centre.
Pretty much every location Rex and Eddie go to has a real-life counterpart. When I go home to visit my family, I take photos of places I want to set a scene in so I can visualise it when I write. Failing that I use Google Streetview to look up places I've been.
Here are some images of real-life Rochester and other Medway towns locations used in the Rex & Eddie series:
Milton Miles Investigations
In Catchee Monkey the pair rent an office in a salmon-coloured row of townhouses with shops on the ground floor.
A friend of mine had an office in the real building for a while, which is why I thought of it when deciding where the detective duo’s headquarters would be.
St Jude’s Primary School
In Feline Fatale Rex & Eddie are hired by their former primary school teacher Mrs. Nerdlinger to find her missing cat. They visit her at work on a couple of occasions, and I based her workplace on my old primary school, St. William of Perth.
In the book, Eddie says the school looks the same. Rex cocks his head and says “Only smaller.” Which is exactly how I felt when I took this photo.
When they go inside, they meet a young boy named Jeremy who is facing a wall in the corridor as a punishment. It’s the same spot I’d stood when I was in trouble.
I changed the name to St Jude’s Primary School because Saint Jude is the patron saint of lost causes, which seemed fitting for Rex and Eddie.
River Invicta Bridge
Also in Feline Fatale, Rex and Eddie go under a motorway bridge along the River Invicta to investigate a caravan. I used to cycle under the bridge with friends when I was a boy. On a recent trip, my dad took me and my step-child to the fields by the bridge to feed some carrots to the nearby Shetland Ponies – so I put them in the book as well.
In real life, it’s the Medway River which cuts through the county of Kent. I changed it to the River Invicta which is Kent’s motto and means "undefeated.”
Kent chose the motto because when the Normans invaded England they never took over Kent. Instead the invaders passed through Kent on their way to London. So essentially, Kent let the Normans into the country which doesn’t fit my definition of undefeated.
Kleanloafers Office
In The Office Spy Rex and Eddie are hired to find a corporate spy in an office. I was inspired by this building along the river. There is no public walkway in the book, as I wanted there to be moments where Eddie was dangerously close to falling into the river.
I never found a way to fit this caged security camera into the story. I wonder how many cameras got stolen before they came up with this solution.
Railway Bridge Underpass
In my latest book, The Third Banana, Rex and Eddie foil a kidnapping by, well, performing a kidnapping of their own. It’s one of my favourite bits of the story and takes place under this railway bridge on the high street.
Cloisterham
To get an idea of where Rex and Eddie are headed next, you can see more images of Rochester and the surrounding Medway towns on my Pinterest page HERE.
