Setting guide
Nothing in the novel's geography is invented. If you are on the Costa del Sol, you can walk the whole case in an afternoon.
The palm-lined viewing platform on the old fortress rock, where the promenade lamps burn all night and the sea mist swallows the far end after three in the morning.
Visit itFree, open 24 hours. Go at dawn before the terraces open — it is the only hour the book's Nerja actually exists.
The small crescent of sand directly beneath the Balcón, reached by a steep whitewashed stair. In the novel it is where the tide leaves the first victim.
Visit itSteps down beside the Balcón. Slippery after rain — the book is accurate about that.
Five kilometres of galleries, of which the public sees a fraction. The unlit sections that Carmen searches are real, and access is genuinely restricted.
Visit itTicketed, daily. The guided cave route takes about 45 minutes.
The narrow street above the eastern cliffs, all iron balconies and shuttered ground floors, where Alex rents the flat with the window he never closes.
Visit itWalk it after 10pm. The lamplight-on-whitewash effect on the cover is not exaggerated.
The white village in the hills above Nerja, and the olive terraces below it, where the second body has been waiting nine years.
Visit it15 minutes inland by road. Go for the Barribarto quarter and the view back to the coast.
The river walk that runs dry and stony in high summer and floods without warning in autumn — the novel's last chapter turns on exactly that.
Visit itPopular summer hike. Check the flow before you go; the book's warning is a real one.