B Baskerville reveals the real Newcastle locations behind Bait & Switch, the ninth DCI Cooper novel: Fenwick's Christmas window, the Byker Wall, Ouseburn Valley and Central Station.

Post cover image: Hayley Green / Fenwicks window, Christmas 2009 / CC BY-SA 2.0

Northumberland Street

Winter in Newcastle. I shudder with cold just thinking about it. The icy chill that gusts up the Tyne funnels through the streets and finds its way through the folds of your scarf to creep down your neck. It’s the cold I remember from decades ago now, standing on Northumberland Street with my teeth chattering and breath clouding, craning to see the Fenwick Christmas window.

Every child who grew up in Newcastle knows the Fenwick window - it was an annual pilgrimage. Sometimes my mum would take me and my sister, sometimes my aunt, sometimes Dad (which meant it was accompanied by last-minute and highly efficient Christmas shopping: Cosmetics from John Lewis, accessories from Fenwick, and jewellery from whichever jewellers my aunt worked in at the time). Afterwards, a hot chocolate at Thornton’s or a milkshake from McDonald’s (Remember how thick those milkshakes were? Trying to drink it through the straw was a workout!) The window itself was almost secondary to the ritual of it: big coats, finding a parking spot, the crowd of people all leaning in the same direction, all looking at the same thing.

That image, hordes of people, attention fixed in one direction, all looking the same way, is what I wanted to capture in the opening scene of Bait & Switch.

The inciting incident takes place just off Northumberland Street, in the shadow of that festive glow, on a night when everyone is looking the other way. It felt such a hideous contrast. What better cover than a city distracted by something beautiful?

Bait & Switch is available here.

The Ouseburn Valley

I think of the Ouseburn as having a split personality: industrial grit and artsy gentrification. By day, the valley’s converted warehouses serve as a hub for artists, storytellers, independent shops, and busy cafes. By night, it is one of the coolest places in the city, where drinkers migrate between popular pubs. The river itself is murky, with canal-like walls. Boats, some new, some neglected, line the banks. Gulls perch, waiting for scraps. The riverside walk curves with the bends of the Ouseburn, the path ahead obscured by the next turn, tall buildings, overhanging plants and low bridges. Even at a busy time, it’s possible to, very quickly, be very alone.

The second crime in Bait & Switch unfolds in the Ouseburn. I won’t say more than that.

The Byker Wall

The mile and a half long solid concrete serpent that is the Byker Wall is impossible to ignore. The vast, undulating residential development built in the 1970s, once considered visionary, remains architecturally remarkable now. In a word, it dominates. From certain angles, it looks less like housing and more like a fortress, protecting those within from the roar of the main road and the chill of northerly winds. Still, it can’t protect a certain resident’s past from bringing him to Cooper’s attention.

Arial View of Bkyer Wall, 1978. Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums

Central Station

I keep coming back to Central Station in Bait & Switch.

It is, first and foremost, a stunning, grand Victorian terminus whose history is a who’s who of Newcastle’s finest: proposed by Grainger, designed by Dobson, in association with Stephenson. 

But it’s not the architecture that I was interested in for this novel; it was the station’s use as a gathering point. (How often in our youth did we say, “I’ll meet you at Central,” or “I’ll meet you at Monument?”) The story opens with a character walking past Central Station, pausing to give money to a homeless woman sheltering there. And as the book progresses, as public anger builds and vigilante groups begin to organise, the station becomes a recurring landmark where tensions rise as people converge.

A City on the Brink

Newcastle is a city of genuine community and fierce loyalty, and yet, like any city, it has its fault lines.

Bait & Switch asks what happens when those lines crack. When a predator has innocent citizens looking over their shoulders, when the system appears to be failing, when fury organises into something darker… decent people start to wonder, is the law enough?

Cooper wonders too, sometimes.

Bait & Switch is available here.