Silas stands back, looks out across the silent, neolithic landscape: Milk Hill, Walkers’ Hill, and on towards the ridge-worn flanks of Martinsell. There are no houses in sight, just the burnished plains of the Vale of Pewsey below and the Marlborough Downs to the north, rolling like a vast, swollen sea.
They buried their dead here 5,000 years ago, deep within the chambered tombs of long barrows that still exist today. The view can’t have changed much since then – except for the white horse below Milk Hill, chalked onto the hillside in the early 19th century.
Extract from The Man on Hackpen Hill by JS Monroe
Author JS Monroe (www.jsthrillers.com) is local to the Vale of Pewsey, so it’s no surprise that he has woven this beautiful part of the world into some of his books.
Best known is The Man On Hackpen Hill, published in 2022. Described by Tom Bradby as ‘A kind of Wiltshire Da Vinci code, with crop circles, mathematical equations and shadowy figures from Porton Down’, this thriller begins with a series of complex and encrypted crop circles that appear on Hackpen Hill, Chute Causeway and in a field outside Stanton St Bernard, each one with a dead body at its centre.
To help him research the book, JS Monroe turned to the Crop Circle Exhibition and Information Centre at Honeystreet Mill, which houses the most comprehensive collection of information on crop circles probably in the world. Wiltshire is the centre of the crop circle phenomena and its historic heart is the Vale of Pewsey.
JS Monroe's latest book is No Place To Hide, a psychological thriller published in April 2023. The plot, a contemporary retelling of Dr Faustus, involves the dark web, murder and blackmail. Although mainly set in Cambridge, London and Cornwall, the Vale village of Great Bedwyn is also featured.
From Richard Jefferies and Edward Thomas in the 19th century, to the authors of the present day, the Vale of Pewsey continues to inspire writers.
The Man on Hackpen Hill
Her best friend is dead and she needs to know why.
Aspiring journalist Bella is on work experience at a national newspaper when, out of the blue, she receives an anonymous letter promising her a big scoop if she travels down to Wiltshire.
All she finds is a government scientist spouting conspiracy theories in the pub. But then Bella's best friend Erin is found dead in a nearby field, her body staged in the centre of a crop circle. Bella is devastated. Is this the real reason she was lured out here?
While detective Silas Hart searches for evidence, Bella scours her own memory for clues. But it's full of blanks – the details of her university days with Erin keep slipping away. What secrets was Erin hiding? And, once they're uncovered, what will it mean for Bella?
No Place To Hide
A spellbinding tale of psychological suspense, weaving together the dark web, murder, and blackmail…
You can shut the doors.
Adam lives a picture-perfect life: happy marriage, two young children, and a flourishing career as a doctor. But Adam also lives with a secret. Hospital CCTV, strangers’ mobile phones, city traffic cameras – he is convinced that they are watching him, recording his every move. All because of something terrible that happened at a drunken party when he was a student.
You can close the blinds.
Only two other people knew what happened that night. Two people he’s long left behind. Until one of them, Clio – Adam’s great unrequited love – turns up on his doorstep, and reignites a sinister pact twenty-four years in the making…
But once it begins, there’ll be no place to hide.
