Deadly Choices is a very rare thing amongst my books: it opens with a kidnapping and not a murder.

(And if you’re worried I’ve just spoilt the book, don’t: the kidnapping is in the opening chapter.)

Deadly Choices was the second crime book I wrote and at that point I hadn’t backed myself into a murdery corner, which was something I did when I decided to call all the books in my later Dorset Crime series The ‘Something’ Murders. But while the Zoe Finch series has the word Deadly in all its titles, that doesn’t mean the book has to open with a death.

So instead, this book opens with the disappearance of two children, at Birmingham’s Cadbury World.

I originally planned to set the opening scene at the Legoland Discovery Centre in central Birmingham. It’s an iconic destination of sorts: set right alongside one of Birmingham’s famous canals and boasting a huge Lego giraffe outside, it’s a great location for a book.

In 2023 Elton John played the nearby Utilita Arena and the giraffe acquired a rather fab pair of star specs, as you can see in the below photo which also includes me and the lovely Sally.)

I even asked my kids if they’d accompany me on a research trip there. They said no: they were teenagers and they knew that the Legoland Discovery Centre wasn’t a patch on Legoland in Windsor, which they’d visited (they’re still campaigning for a trip to the Denmark version).

That didn’t deter me. If you know anything about me or my writing, you’ll know that I love research trips. It’s why I write books in places I’d like to visit.

So I looked into visiting the discovery centre without kids. Legoland Discovery Centres don’t normally allow unaccompanied adults in. But they do have occasional sessions where adults are let in without kids.

One of my (adult) writer friends is a keen fan of Lego, so I decided to ask him about his experience of visiting. He told me how it worked and was encouraging, but also asked me a crucial question. One I really should have asked myself.

“If you’re setting this book in Birmingham, and you want a critical scene to take place at a visitor attraction... why aren’t you setting it at Cadbury World?”

Of course! Why didn’t I think of that.

You don’t get much more Brummie than the Cadbury factory in Bournville. Established in 1824, it was an early example of a social workplace, with decent housing (now worth a fortune) for its workers, more leave than most factories of the time, and a real sense of social responsibility mixed with the Victorian Brummie values of Quaker-inspired hard work mixed with social responsibility.

And of course, it’s been exporting chocolate to the far reaches of the UK, never mind internationally, for well over a century. Wrapped in those iconic purple wrappers, the colour of which is often associated with Birmingham but can’t be used to represent the city cos it’s trademarked (boo!).

So Cadbury World it was. Instead of deciding to take her two children to Legoland one day on the school. holidays, she plumps for a day at Cadbury World.

A decision she comes to regret, which you’ll discover when you read the book...