I love Swanage. I’ve been visiting the town since the seventies, paddling in the sea, exploring the back streets behind the main part of town, and climbing the cliffs up towards Ballard Down and Peveril Point, on either side of the town.

Surprisingly, I hardly ever visited The Globe as a child. I’m not sure why; you’d expect it to be a regular stop on the Swanage tourist trail. Maybe it’s because our caravan was in Wareham, and if it wasn’t sunny we’d head inland or stay indoors. Swanage was for sunny days, and the beach.

But it was something I was always aware of. You can’t enter a gift shop in Swanage without seeing postcards of the Great Globe and Durlston Castle behind it, a title which pushes the word ‘castle’ about as far as it can go.

Unusually, the Globe isn’t owned by the National Trust. It was originally owned, and built, by George Burt, the “King of Swanage”, between 1886 and 1887. He was a keen astronomer and built the Globe as a sort of planetarium in reverse. Instead of sitting inside it and looking up at images of the stars projected onto the ceiling, you could walk around it and look at the images etched into its surface.

If you like quirkiness, and a bit of geekiness rolled in, you’ll love the Globe. It’s not entirely accurate, but would have been ground-breaking at the time it was built. It’s set into the hillside in a way that’s annoyingly asymmetrical. Try and photograph it, and you’ll never get the perfect angle. And the way it looks out to sea, it seems to think it’s some kind of lighthouse or watchtower. As far as I’m aware, it never had that function.

If you like statistics, it weighs forty tons, is ten feet in diameter, and is constructed from Portland Stone (of course).

So the Globe will be lurking somewhere in the subconscious of everyone who’s ever visited Swanage, even if they haven’t seen it first-hand. Given that, and its shape, it was an obvious spot to dump a body. So the opening chapter of The Monument Murders depicts a grumpy teenage boy, Shane, who’s been coerced into taking the family dog out for a morning walk. Needless to say, in true dogwalker fashion, he finds the body.

The victim, and the potential suspects, live nearby in Swanage, which gave me an opportunity to write about the town I’ve been visiting for most of my life. There are houses on suburban streets, a disappearance near Ulwell where the town merges into the countryside, and a climactic chase at Peveril Point.

Peveril Point is one of my favourite spots in Swanage. It’s an uphill walk from the crowded beaches and town centre, and always quiet even in the height of summer. When I was a teenager and wanted to get away from my family (no doubt rolling my eyes as I went), I used to take myself off for a wander towards Peveril Point, with as much of the walk as I could manage along the shoreline, clambering over rocks and into occasional caves before ascending to the cliffs at the top.

When I was writing The Monument Murders, I realised that the version of Peveril Point I was writing about was quite different from the one I remembered in the eighties. It’s an area where there’s been a fair amount of development, with homes and holiday flats built along the seafront and higher up the hill, and I needed to be sure of the terrain before I could write the book’s closing chapters. So at two days’ notice, I took myself down to Swanage to explore.

Unfortunately, I didn’t check the weather forecast first.

It was blowing a gale when I arrived in Swanage, and the town was deserted. I darted out of my car and grabbed my waterproof jacket and trousers from the boot. Then I trudged up the hill towards the point, trying not to worry about the way the wind was trying to blow me off the cliff. At least it added to the drama.

Half an hour later, I’d recorded a face-to-camera video in which you can’t hear my voice over the wind, and I was soaked through.

The rain had made its way through a hat, two waterproof jackets and a hood, my walking trousers and my waterproof trousers over them. I didn’t fancy sitting in the car back to my hotel and dripping all over the seat, so I headed into town and made for Love Cake etc, where I knew I could get a cuppa and some cake.

It turned out that the whole of Swanage had the same idea. Sensible people. I shared a table with two men who’d retired to Swanage and tried to talk me into doing the same, then said my reluctant goodbyes and headed back out into the rain. They must have thought I was mad.

So that was the first murder in the book: a body spreadeagled over the Globe. And there’s a second, at another monument in (or at least very near) Swanage.

But to find out about that, you’ll have to read the book…