All the stories in this book either fed into or grew out of the year I spent as crimewriter-in-residence on the St. Peter's Riverside Sculpture Project in Sunderland, 1993-94. At the time it seemed as though it had to be one of the strangest jobs in the country; retrospect assures me that I was too cautious in my judgment, and it was in fact the strangest job in the known universe. The thread that links the stories making their first appearance in Blood Waters with those previously published elsewhere is that all are very firmly set in geographical locations, and all feature death by the water.