The dead girls all have the same nightclub stamp on the backs of their hands — the same one David’s daughter had the day she disappeared.

The publisher did have a clause having final say on the title, but there was no conversation about options, or healthy communication to rationalise the change. The actual marketing activity consisted of a handful of tweets, and Dive didn’t feature in newsletters or front-facing online activity. The river is the UK’s biggest crime scene: it holds macabre secrets and has a habit of exposing them. An outdoor enthusiast with over twenty years' publishing experience, he’s the author of Vertebrate’s best-selling Peak District Mountain Bikingand White Peak Mountain Bikingguides. If you’re lucky you’ll find treasure on the foreshore; if you’re not, you could see a body being dredged from the mud.

It was necessary for the story to function, but it also meant I could part from the reality of the real marine police when needed.

Repetition and repartee meant I overheard some of these horrors, and eventually, they’d include me from the other side of the bar. However, in Jon Barton’s Dive, I found myself surprised continually throughout the book at both the turns of the plot and the actions of the characters, and not a hint of cheese.

Jon works freelance as a reader and editor for TLC, BFI, and independent production companies with a focus on genre-led storytelling. Then they uncover something that will threaten to blow the case apart — if it doesn't get them killed first .

How did you go about finding specific details about the operating of the Metropolitan Police to make your book feel so realistic? I’ll drop the second part on Monday 9th January, with a deep dive (ha) exploring the querying process, editing the novel, and working with an editor. I didn’t have the skill or the talent to reverse engineer the novels I liked and answer the important questions like: How did they do that? In fact, it was refreshing to find myself feeling more educated, as the book literally dives into the murky depths of the hidden riverways under the City of London.If the publishing industry were forthcoming about what really goes on behind closed doors, no-one would ever pursue writing novels in the traditional way. The two form an unlikely partnership in uncovering a particularly nasty case involving drowned girls and drugs. John is a keen rock climber and mountain biker and is author of the award-winning Peak District Bouldering. The dead girls all have the same nightclub stamp on the backs of their hands — the same stamp David’s daughter wore on the day she disappeared.