Broadchurch creator writes thriller set in a West Dorset village
Over a decade after giving the golden cliffs of West Bay a starring role as the setting for the multi-award-winning television phenomenon Broadchurch, the show’s creator Chris Chibnall has placed his adopted county at the heart of his debut crime novel.
Following in the footsteps of his literary heroine Agatha Christie, Death at the White Hart contains many classic whodunnit tropes, multiple suspects, with a twist at the end. And, like Broadchurch, it’s set in contemporary Dorset, the county that has been Chibnall’s home for the past 25 years.
‘I set it in Dorset because I really love living here,’ he declares. ‘It’s such a rich place in terms of its textures, people and communities. I was very proud to put Dorset on screen in Broadchurch. So, it seems only natural to do it with my first novel. And I like the idea of Death at the White Hart being a Broadchurch adjacent novel. I feel like it takes place five or 10 miles away from there.’
Indeed, the book begins on an isolated stretch of the A35 at night where the body of the landlord of the fictional White Hart pub is discovered. ‘I'm trying to mythologise the A35 in the same way Route 66 is mythologised in America,’ laughs Chibnall. ‘I've done that drive along the A35 at 1am when there's low fog, and you're thinking, what’s round the next corner? And that's really where the idea of the first creepy image in the novel comes from.’
Chibnall, who lives near Bridport with his family, is talking to me from the Grand Hotel in Torquay, the setting for the International Agatha Christie Festival where he is due to speak about his new book and his love of the grand dame of crime writing. As a teenager growing up on Merseyside, Chibnall borrowed a Christie novel every week from Formby Library.
Following in the footsteps of his literary heroine Agatha Christie, Death at the White Hart contains many classic whodunnit tropes, multiple suspects, with a twist at the end. And, like Broadchurch, it’s set in contemporary Dorset, the county that has been Chibnall’s home for the past 25 years.
‘I set it in Dorset because I really love living here,’ he declares. ‘It’s such a rich place in terms of its textures, people and communities. I was very proud to put Dorset on screen in Broadchurch. So, it seems only natural to do it with my first novel. And I like the idea of Death at the White Hart being a Broadchurch adjacent novel. I feel like it takes place five or 10 miles away from there.’
Indeed, the book begins on an isolated stretch of the A35 at night where the body of the landlord of the fictional White Hart pub is discovered. ‘I'm trying to mythologise the A35 in the same way Route 66 is mythologised in America,’ laughs Chibnall. ‘I've done that drive along the A35 at 1am when there's low fog, and you're thinking, what’s round the next corner? And that's really where the idea of the first creepy image in the novel comes from.’
Chibnall, who lives near Bridport with his family, is talking to me from the Grand Hotel in Torquay, the setting for the International Agatha Christie Festival where he is due to speak about his new book and his love of the grand dame of crime writing. As a teenager growing up on Merseyside, Chibnall borrowed a Christie novel every week from Formby Library.
