Crime Hotspots: San Francisco

The Law & Order series alone make New York the undisputed television USA crime hotspot. LA had years of Columbo and Perry Mason cases. Miami had Miami Vice, now CSI and Dexter. And of course Baltimore has made a late bid with The Wire and Homicide.

But today, our attention turns to another US city, San Francisco. Perhaps not so prominent recently (there is no CSI SF for one thing) but my reason for featuring it is more personal. I’m off to San Francisco this week.

In a bid to prepare myself for the trip, I was planning on absorbing some San Francisco crime drama. Sadly, I didn’t have access to ‘The Streets of San Francisco” which I remember vaguely but fondly from my childhood, but I did manage to watch a few episodes of Ironside, one of which featured the post office on Geary Street prominently in its plot.

Looking for something more contemporary, I was going to indulge myself in some Monk, which is set in San Francisco. But it is just set there – it is actually filmed in Canada.

I turned my attention then to cinema. I’d already seen Vertigo which is quite famous for its use of San Francisco locations, but watching another SF based Hitchcock, The Family Plot. The location didn’t play quite as big a role in this one though. I also attempted to watch Bullitt which shamefully I’d not seen. The city looked great in it, plenty of shots of the cable car, but I’m afraid I fell asleep in it.

Of course, the big one in San Francisco crime is the real-life crime of the Zodiac case. I loved the film and am still intrigued by the case. So in between photographing the bridge, vintage shopping, visiting galleries and bars, I’m determined to solve the case!

Crime Hotspots: Cabot Cove

Oxford is a city, Midsomer is a county but this crime hotspot is just a village. However Cabot Cove’s murder rate is probably higher than those other places as it is often the setting for television’s longest running detective show, Murder, She Wrote.

But this should perhaps not come as any great surprise because Cabot Cove is in Maine (or it would be if it wasn’t fictional!) and Maine is often the setting for Stephen King’s stories, making it probably the deadliest of US states.

On the surface, it is a picturesque fishing village that has lately become a popular tourist destination, which bolsters its killable population. It has a Sheriff although I don’t know why they bother with him because its most famous resident, Jessica Fletcher solves all of the crimes.

Crime Hotspot: Midsomer

I'm glad the English county of Midsomer is fictional because it has a bloody high body count. The bodies are stacked up in every episode of Midsomer Murders. And Midsomer is not a sprawling metropolis - its is a picturesque rurul county in middle England.

I haven't watched that many episodes of this as its unbelievability gets a bit much for me, and my cousin mercilessly scoffed at my auntie for watching it. But according to the legions of fans the series seems to have, it is tongue-in-cheek and the high death toll has even been commented on in the series.


The multiple murders take place in quaint villages with names like 'Midsomer Mallow' 'Badgers Drift', strange ethereal places, but that have an underlying menace - a bit like Summer Isle in The Wicker Man. Strangely enough, several real English counties are very keen to claim their connection with Midsomer, as if being a hotbed of homicide is some sort of tourist attraction. Personally, I've never noticed the beauty of the landscape when DCI Barnaby has found another corpse in a copse. But if you do feel inspired to visit Midsomer, Buckinghamshire seems to have laid the biggest claim to it.


I've never been a big fan of the countryside (I like to be near some good shops, cinema and theatres) so this series does prove to me that I was right all along to distrust the country.

Crime Hotspots: Oxford

Given the fierce rivalry between Oxford and Cambridge universities, everyone connected with the latter must have rubbed their hands with glee when Morse was on the television.

The Oxford of Morse is still a romanticised place, life centres around the University colleges and quaint little pubs serving real ale, and the town is awash with opera fanatics. But lurking amongst its dreaming spires are murderers aplenty.

Episode after episode is described as the death of an academic of some sort, usually of the more civilised subjects Classics, History, Literature etc (little if any reference is made to those involved in its Engineering department). Coming to Oxford as a student, don, professor, or visiting lecturer was portrayed as an undertaking thwart the danger. Much safer to go to Cambridge which, to my knowledge, hasn’t been the setting of any major crime show (spies, rather than murderers are Cambridge’s thing).

I wonder what effect the depiction of Oxford as a hot bed of murder and deceit had on the number of applications to its prestigious seat of learning? Probably very little as studying to enter Oxford probably doesn’t leave much time for crime drama – a lesson that would have served me well in my youth when my stunning academic career was sidetracked somewhat by Remington Steele, Moonlighting and Charlie’s Angels.