Saltwater Mansions
On sale
12th June 2025
Price: £18.99
‘A proper read-it-in-one-go book, opening up an advent calendar of lives behind the doors of a block of flats’
ADAM KAY, author of THIS IS GOING TO HURT
‘I inhaled it in a sitting – what an exhilarating book. Brave, revealing and unexpected’
CATHY RENTZENBRINK, author of THE LAST ACT OF LOVE
Margate is in the grip of a heatwave when David Whitehouse stumbles across the mysterious story of a local woman who lived on the ground floor of Saltwater Mansions, a block of flats not far from the sea. On paper, Caroline Lane was unremarkable. She paid her mortgage every month. She always paid her bills. But nobody had seen or heard from her for 13 years, and no one had ever come looking. She had disappeared completely.
David quickly becomes as fascinated by this missing woman as the residents of Saltwater Mansions, all of whom have their own theories to share, and their own unique stories to tell. As his obsession grows, David unearths vital clues that private detectives and amateur investigators alike have failed to spot. But the closer he gets to the truth, the clearer it becomes that this mystery was never meant to be solved, and that some stories don’t want to be told. What if this one was never about Caroline Lane at all?
From acclaimed and award-winning author David Whitehouse, Saltwater Mansions is an astonishing work of creative non-fiction blending reportage and memoir to explore the extraordinary hidden lives of ordinary people, the impact of grief, and the dangerous allure of taking true crime stories into our own hands.
ADAM KAY, author of THIS IS GOING TO HURT
‘I inhaled it in a sitting – what an exhilarating book. Brave, revealing and unexpected’
CATHY RENTZENBRINK, author of THE LAST ACT OF LOVE
Margate is in the grip of a heatwave when David Whitehouse stumbles across the mysterious story of a local woman who lived on the ground floor of Saltwater Mansions, a block of flats not far from the sea. On paper, Caroline Lane was unremarkable. She paid her mortgage every month. She always paid her bills. But nobody had seen or heard from her for 13 years, and no one had ever come looking. She had disappeared completely.
David quickly becomes as fascinated by this missing woman as the residents of Saltwater Mansions, all of whom have their own theories to share, and their own unique stories to tell. As his obsession grows, David unearths vital clues that private detectives and amateur investigators alike have failed to spot. But the closer he gets to the truth, the clearer it becomes that this mystery was never meant to be solved, and that some stories don’t want to be told. What if this one was never about Caroline Lane at all?
From acclaimed and award-winning author David Whitehouse, Saltwater Mansions is an astonishing work of creative non-fiction blending reportage and memoir to explore the extraordinary hidden lives of ordinary people, the impact of grief, and the dangerous allure of taking true crime stories into our own hands.
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Reviews
An utterly incredible book. The memoir of a seaside town, a portrait of an absence, and a hymn of grief. I am still thinking about it
I inhaled it in a sitting - what an exhilarating book. Brave, revealing and unexpected, this is a wise and original exploration of the extraordinary nature of ordinary lives and how they are interpreted by others
Brilliant. A proper read-it-in-one-go book, opening up an advent calendar of lives behind the doors of a block of flats. Beautifully written, humane and soul-baring
A beautiful, humane, compelling book. What begins as a humble inquiry into a small-town missing person's case becomes a plaintive, intricately nested set of untold stories, taking in the denizens of Margate to Whitehouse's own family. Each quietly extraordinary person who's entangled in this narrative is illuminated with such vividness and compassion you can't help but recognise the fragments of your own experience in all of them. David Whitehouse has always been a brilliant writer of Britain's overlooked characters, and this is his finest work yet
Saltwater Mansions delves into an engrossing mystery through a kaleidoscope of lives, and the result is thrilling, moving, and searingly profound. I loved it
A master storyteller and one of our greatest non-fiction writers
Magnificently told and devastatingly moving, Saltwater Mansions is a treasure trove of human truths - a bittersweet dive into the profundity, melancholy, and strange sweetness of being alive, bound by a totally original, utterly compelling true crime narrative