Ealing is the district of London where Robin and Matthew are living in Career of Evil. They had previously been living in Clapham.
Their flat on Hastings Road is described as being in a three-story house converted to flats, with a small front garden in need of mowing and two white doors crammed together. The house in the photo below is the only house we could find that matched this description.
Career of Evil opens with the killer tailing Robin and Matthew as they make their way from their flat on Hastings Road to a rugby game with Sarah Shadlock and Tom Turvey.
Their route takes them from Hastings Road, a “long residential street.”
They then take a right into Saint Leonard’s Road. “Trees waved gently in the slight spring breeze.”
They then turn left at the end of Saint Leonard’s Road and onto a thoroughfare called Uxbridge Road.
They pass the Ealing council building, “sheet glass windows blazed high above.”
Below is a photo of Christ the Savior church on Broadway in Ealing. They would have passed this church on the way to the bus stop, though it isn’t mentioned in the book.
They pass through the Arcadia shopping centre before reaching the bus stop. (The shopping centre has since been demolished.)
The killer follows Robin and Matthew onto the 83 bus en-route to Wembley Central.
A little later in the novel, in chapter 6, Robin goes to the Waitrose near her home in West Ealing to pick up some groceries.
In Waitrose, Robin finds herself stood in the wine aisle talking to Strike on the phone.
Later in the novel, Strike meets Robin at West Ealing station where she picks him up in the Land Rover before setting off for Barrow-in-Furness.
You can just imagine Strike standing outside smoking his cigarette before climbing into the smelly Land Rover.
Following the events of the Shacklewell Ripper case, in Lethal White, Robin and Matthew move away from Ealing to their new home on Albury Street in Deptford.
Find Ealing on the map below.
