The poem takes the reader through a variety of vibrant images that paint a picture of the abandoned chalk-pit. It appears to the first speaker like an amphitheatreor stage. There is something very much alive about it even though, as the second speaker says, it has been abandoned for a century. The first can’t get the feeling out of his mind though. He insists that he’s sensing the presence of something that “just” ended, like a play or performance. EXCERPT: Judy feels for a pulse but she knows in her heart that it's useless. She knows by the caked blood around the knife and on Eddie's filthy army surplus jumper. She knows by the angle of Eddie's head, his grey beard on his chest. She is just straightening up when she hears a voice from the street below. The Honey Pot Café is on the right and a little further on the small Shoreham Aircraft Museum ? (which has a tearoom) is on the left.

The resolution of the mysteries seems, if that is possible, to be getting more far-fetched as the series progresses and this one seems particularly bizarre (as well as solved by Ruth/the police with very limited logic).There is little stereotyping of characters and real development of the relationships we are aware of already 8 books in. It is so clever that Katie, Ruth's daughter is brought into this story as she is into drama and plays a young Alice in an adaptation of a Lewis Carroll classic but updated as "Alice's adventures underground". I love these books. I love the characters and the relationships (though could do with less soap opera style content) and the humor is great. I love Kate and seeing her grow & change. I love the settings, though I know some of the uses of some of the ones in this book are made up for the story, but so much is real too. One reason it’s particularly fun reading with Hilary is that she is a local so she knows so many landmarks, towns, etc. that appear in these books. Alternatively, simply follow the riverside path directly to Mill Lane and go up this lane to the High Street.

From the very first Ruth Galloway book, The Crossing Places, I've been enchanted with this series. The settings are interesting, from a salt marsh to a World War II airfield to an old children’s home. The author uses local history to enrich her mysteries. As I’ve read through this series, the characters have become old friends. Cross the road carefully and take the left-hand of two driveways just off to the right, joining the North Downs Way ? (NDW). You now have a long steady climb up Otford Mount, initially between garden fences and then through a wooded area (halfway up, a short detour down a side path by a wooden bench offers some fine views across the Darent valley).

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I closed the cover of The Chalk Pit with a smile on my face, and a sense of anticipation for what is to come in The Dark Angel, the next in the series. Hyman Goldstein was well known for taking these regular walks. It was feasible that Ley — or someone he’d hired, for, as former justice minster he had access to a lot of criminals — could have pushed Goldstein to his death. However it happened, for the third time in less than a decade, one of Ley’s rivals had met a sudden, unexpected and unusual demise.