Classic crime novelists often used vague fictitious settings for their action, perhaps to avoid any notions of libel. For that reason, it is always a delight when the location is real and specific (or easily discerned from the pseudonym), inviting a comparison of ‘then and now’. Here are a few favourites:
Somerville College, Oxford Gaudy Night (1935)
Iffley Road Oxford The Moving Toyshop (1944)
The Old Bailey, London Tragedy at Law (1942)
Fleet Street, London Fatality in Fleet Street (1935)
Lincolns Inn Fields, London The Urgent Hangman (1938)
Cromer, Norfolk Death Walk in Eastrepp (1931)
Norwich, Norfolk The Norwich Victims (1933)
Birling, Kent A Surfeit of Lampreys (1941)
Burgh Island, Devon Evil Under the Sun (1941)