THIS week sees the latest addition to the fictional wing of the Wiltshire Police Force with the publication of Stay Buried by Kate Webb, the gripping first instalment in a series of novels featuring detective Matt Lockyer.

Lockyer joins other local protagonists such as Silas Hart, JS Monroe’s detective operating out of Swindon, Andy Maslen’s DI Ford, based in Salisbury, and Tariq Goddard’s Terry Balance, investigating a wilder Wessex from his own cathedral city base.

Matt Lockyer fills a gap in this fictional force by working from Devizes. Outside his police station hangs a limp flag, proclaiming Primus et Optimus – first and best, a nod to Wiltshire having the oldest county force in the country (established at the Bear Hotel in Devizes in November 1839, if you’re interested). Lockyer knows the area well – he grew up on a farm in a ‘crease’ off the Salisbury-Melksham road, and now lives in the village of Orcheston, just north of Shrewton.

The murder in the book, meanwhile, takes place in the fictionalised village of Stoke Lavington – it’s the cold case of a killing that took place fourteen years before. Lockyer helped put away housekeeper Hedy Lambert for murder: but now the person she was originally accused of killing has turned up alive and well.

Stay Buried is Kate Webb’s first crime book, but far from her first novel. You may know the author as historical fiction writer Katherine Webb, with bestsellers such as The Legacy, The Unseen and The Disappearance. When I caught up with Kate/Katherine, she explained how the decision to turn to crime was a ‘schism rather than a switch’. Many of her historical novels have a mystery at heart, so crime felt a logical step in her writing journey.

Katherine described how she had long had a love of crime, both on screen and on the page. In particular, she admired writers and series where the stories are embedded in the landscape: Belinda Bauer and her Exmoor trilogy, Ann Cleeves’ Shetland stories, and the TV series Hinterland, set in the Welsh county of Ceredigion.

Our region is an area that Katherine knows well: she grew up in Over Wallop and now living in a village near Bath, knows the route back home across Salisbury Plain like the back of her hand. The landscape ‘resonates’ with her, she explained, saying that there’s something unusual about the wide-open spaces and far-off horizons we are fortunate to enjoy.

Also fortuitous for her crime writing are the inhabitants of her local village, which boast four serving police officers and a murder detective. That must be one of the safest communities in the country!

Stay Buried by Kate Webb, published by Quercus, is out now.