By Neil Vowles
11:30am Thursday 9th August 2012
Book lovers are being given the chance to follow in the footsteps of a fictional detective on the trail of a murderer round Brighton and Hove.
For the first time ever, fans of bestselling crime novelist Peter James will be able to take a tour of the sites that inspired his work.
Brighton Walks is hosting the first ever DS Roy Grace inspired walk through Brighton and Hove later this month.
The tour is the brainchild of tour guide Lyn Neville who is basing the walk on Mr James’s first two novels Dead Simple and Looking Good Dead.
The talk starts at Brighton Station where Looking Good Dead’s lead character Tom Bryce discovers a DVD on a train that changes his life.
It will also take in the hairdressers and tailors of North Laine favoured by DS Roy Grace before heading into Kemp Town to inspect a couple of murder sites.
Ms Neville has been planning the tour for more than a year and has received assistance from the Lewes-based author.
It was originally hoped that the tours would launch during last year’s Brighton Festival but the 50-year-old had to wait for permission from Mr James’s publishers Pan Macmillan.
Interest in the tour has really grown since April when Mr James tweeted that he was going on a rehearsal of the walk with Ms Neville.
By the time she returned from her office, she already had emails from interested customers wanting to sign up.
The tours, which take groups of up to 25 around the city, is already close to being fully-booked for the inaugural walk on August 25.
People have also already booked places for all walks in September.
Roy Grace fans will also be able to book private tours for groups of ten or more.
The tours are expected to attract a lot of international crime fans to the city with Peter James’s Canadian publishers already spreading the word across the water while Visit Brighton are getting the message out to Grace addicts in Germany.
Ms Neville said: “Peter has been absolutely fantastic and really encouraged me.
“He’s walked the walk with me and pointed out, ‘this was the house I had in mind’, so I actually know which building he was thinking about when he wrote the books.
“For people all over the world reading these books, when they come to Brighton and see the scenes it will add an extra dimension.
“Nobody else can do this walk, only I have the permission to do them.”
The event launches on August 25 and then weekly from September 8 between 3 and 5pm costing £10 for adults.
For more details visit www.brightonwalks.com or contact 01273 302100.