The Sea: Art Marvik's Refuge and Battleground

The sea has always been an important part of my crime fiction. It provides settings, opportunities for mystery and danger, and a constantly changing backdrop against which people live their lives.

But in the Art Marvik thrillers, the sea is more than a setting. It's part of the man himself.

Marvik is drawn to the coast. He finds a degree of peace there, away from the demands and complications of the world. His home is a remote cottage on the Isle of Wight, and the surrounding coastline gives him the space and solitude he values.

He's an independent man, not particularly comfortable with depending on others. The sea offers him something he finds difficult to achieve elsewhere: a sense of freedom.

But that relationship is complicated.

Marvik's connection with the sea goes back a long way. His parents were marine scientists, and their deaths in an underwater explosion when he was seventeen left a lasting mark on him. The sea, which had been part of his family life, became associated with loss as well as fascination.

It's perhaps no surprise that he has a complicated relationship with it.

His military career and subsequent experiences have also brought him into contact with the sea in some of its more dangerous forms. He knows that it can be unpredictable and unforgiving. It can provide shelter and escape, but it can also expose people to considerable risk.

In Deadly Waves, the first Art Marvik thriller, his experiences at sea take a particularly dangerous turn when a luxury motor cruiser he is protecting is attacked by pirates in the Indian Ocean. Marvik survives, but the incident changes the course of his life.

He returns to the Isle of Wight, but the sea and the dangers associated with it are never far away.

I enjoy exploring this contrast when I write him. Marvik can be at ease beside the water, watching the changing light or the movement of the waves, yet he knows better than most that the sea should never be taken for granted.

It's a place of beauty, but also of uncertainty. It can conceal things, separate people and provide opportunities for those who want to operate beyond the sight of others.

For a crime writer, that offers endless possibilities.

There are secluded stretches of coastline, isolated harbours, boats coming and going, and places where people can disappear from view. The sea connects communities, but it can also keep secrets.

For Marvik, it represents both the freedom he seeks and the dangers he cannot entirely escape.

Perhaps that's why I keep returning to the coast when I write him. The sea reflects something of his character: powerful, unpredictable, sometimes calm, sometimes turbulent, and never entirely revealing what lies beneath the surface.