This July, hundreds of people will head to Harrogate to celebrate the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writers’ Festival, an established headline event in the literary calendar.

Hosted by Harrogate International Festivals, it’s a crime literature lover’s dream, with the cream of the crime fiction community taking centre stage to discuss the genre; their writing influences and insights on the next big thing emerging into the crime writing world.

We’re not sure why this would be, but perhaps it’s the breathtaking landscapes and quaint, quirky market towns that have ignited the inspiration and stirred the creative juices of well-known authors throughout time.

A pretty market town on the edge of the Dales, Masham is full of independent retailers, art galleries and home to two Yorkshire breweries. You could easily lose a day or two wandering around exploring and imagining what inspired the inclusion of this charming, North Yorkshire gem in the detective novels.

The late Yorkshire-born crime novelist Peter Robinson was also inspired to feature a scenic landmark of the Harrogate area in his literary works. In the DCI Banks series of books, ‘In A Dry Season’ a long lost village, Hobb’s End is featured, which is flooded by Thornfield reservoir. In real life, the fictional ‘Hobb’s End’ is in fact the village of West End - which was flooded to make way for Thuscross Reservoir.

Whilst on a completely different note, the Thirsk area is widely known as the setting for the ‘All Creatures Great and Small’ series of books, featuring the vet James Herriot and his antics with the animals and humans that he encounters after moving from Scotland to North Yorkshire.

So if you’re a keen reader and would like to follow in the footsteps of the authors who’ve imaginations have gone wild here, plan a North Yorkshire getaway and explore the locations that have inspired some truly gripping works of literature - from classic novels to the present day.

Perhaps you might even be inspired to put pen to paper yourself?