Detective Shaw’s London: Holloway

On the edge of the Borough of Islington lies the district of Holloway, which is one of the most densely populated in London and home to a multicultural population. It is crossed by Holloway Road, which is part of A1, Britain’s longest numbered road (actually outside the city it becomes a motorway).

The district, which is mostly residential, has no particular tourist attractions, with the exception of the stadium of the Arsenal football team, the Emirates Stadium (in the first photo, where you can also find me, and in detail in the photos below, both taken in March 2011), which with its 60,000 seats is the third largest in London, after Wembley (I went there the following year for the Olympics) and that of Twickenham (where, however, rugby is played).

The Emirates Stadium is located exactly in Ashburton Grove, the name by which it was called before taking that of the sponsor (Emirate Airlines), in the same area where a scene from “The Mentor” narrated in Mina’s blog takes place.
During the scene, our favourite serial killer follows Christopher Garnish to the house where he is hiding, where she risks being seen by PC Mills (who in “Syndrome” we find out he was promoted to the rank of sergeant), also on the trail of the suspect in the murders. The characters arrive in the area, however, from Arsenal Tube station, which is in the adjacent Highbury district.

The house where Garnish is really exists. If you read its description in the book, after following the route taken from the station, and glance at Ashburton Grove with the street view on Google Maps, perhaps you might be able to spot it.

Holloway also returns in “Syndrome”, this time to show a scene where DCI George Jankowski meets a police informant. The detective in charge of the forensics team dealing with crimes taking place in Islington (a colleague of Eric’s in the same rank, Detective Chief Inspector) is near Holloway Road Tube station and follows the informant with his car into a side street.

Two more interesting places are mentioned in the scene. The first is the North Campus of London Metropolitan University (in the third photo, by Alan Stanton, you can see the Orion Building which is part of it). The university is also called simply London Met and includes a second campus in the City.
The second is The Studios Islington (now called Studios Holloway) and it is a complex that includes offices, commercial premises, restaurants, and creative spaces.

In “Syndrome”, I also tell something more about the history of the Holloway district. In this regard, I mention the fact that it was the scene of a famous real crime at the beginning of the last century: the bloody murder of Cora Crippen by her husband, even if it is now questioned whether he was the murderer (later sentenced to death and executed). Unfortunately, the truth will never be known.
I reported it in the novel also because I had the pleasure of reading a book that narrates it in parallel with the biography of Guglielmo Marconi. I am referring to “Thunderstruck” by Erik Larson, a fictionalised essay that narrates how thanks to the radio-telegraph invented by Marconi the police managed to capture Hawley Harvey Crippen, who was fleeing to America with his lover. The captain of the ocean liner in which he was travelling warned Scotland Yard, and Crippen found the police waiting for him upon his arrival in Canada, one step away from being able to disappear forever.

Holloway was also the home of Douglas Adams, author of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, and is still home to many artists, journalists, authors and other people who work in television and film industries, including actress Kaya Scodelario, star of the Maze Runner series and of the fifth film in the Pirates of the Caribbean series (with Johnny Depp).
HMP Holloway Prison, which later became a women’s prison, is also infamous because Oscar Wilde served in it.

In the fiction of “Syndrome”, Holloway is also home to the Murphy family, who own a chain of pubs and a drug trafficking network. I hope the Irish don’t hate me for choosing surnames and names that bring Ireland to mind, even if this is never specified in the book. As I said, this is absolutely fictional. I don’t actually know if there are a lot of Irish (or descendants) in Holloway, but I made sure there is no pub named Murphy’s Den.

It is also a coincidence that, in both books, the bad guy has to do with Holloway. I swear I did not notice this until I finished writing the first draft of the second book!