Setting as a Character: 5 Crime Writers Who Know How to Transport Readers
One reason to love novels is that they can transport you to faraway places you’ve never been. Or they explore a city or town you thought you knew in a way that deepens your affection, or maybe your revulsion. The best crime writers use the big cities as more than backdrops to their stories; they become characters. Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes moved through a lamplit, sooty, foggy London so vivid you could feel the dampness chill your cheeks and the soot burn your nostrils.
Many modern crime novelists turn cities, towns, and neighborhoods into characters. Below is my list of the top five current crime and thriller writers whose novels bring the reader into the heart and soul of the cities and towns where they take place.
Michael Connelly’s Los Angeles
One of my favorite contemporary crime writers is Michael Connelly. His prose is crisp and clear, probably owing to his experience as a crime journalist in Miami. For me, starting one of his books is like slipping into a warm bath. Connelly sets most of his novels in LA, naming a few after actual Los Angeles locations (Angel’s Flight, The Narrows, Echo Park). Detective Harry Bosch explores LA, investigating murders in various locations, and the dark side of LA emerges in the craziest places. In The Narrows, he chases a serial killer down the concrete channels of the LA River. The Lincoln Lawyer series has attorney Mickey Haller working out of his car and driving all over LA for his clients. And I enjoy spending time with one of Connelly’s more recently introduced characters, Detective Renee Ballard, as she surfs the beaches of LA to clear her head before starting her shifts. Los Angeles is spread out, but Connelly collapses the city into a moody backdrop for his crime stories.
Elmore Leonard’s Detroit
Elmore Leonard famously wrote ten rules of writing. Number nine cautions, “Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.” Given his love of Detroit, his repeated use of the city, its buildings, airport, and physical decline as the setting for many of his crime novels, I find this achingly ironic. Leonard is constantly taking the measure of the city without breaking a sweat. He said, “There are cities that get by on their good looks, offer climate and scenery, views of mountains or oceans, rockbound or with palm trees; and there are cities like Detroit that have to work for a living…” Nobody does Detroit like Elmore Leonard.
Mick Herron’s London
There are so many daffy characters to enjoy in Mick Herron’s Slough House series that it’s easy to miss how beautifully he crafts the London locations. You don’t have to look any further than his careful description of Slough House headquarters and the surrounding neighborhood near the Barbican Tube Station to admire Herron’s ability to drop the reader into a location as he tells his story. Clandestine meetings on the banks of the Thames and in famous London parks, exploding malls, government buildings, the financial district—it’s all there. And consider this pitch-perfect passage from Spook Street: “They were south of the river, half a mile from the Thames, near one of those busy junctions which rely on the self-preservation instincts of the drivers using it; either a shining example of new-age civic theory, or an old-fashioned failure of town planning. On one of its corners sat a church; on another, earth-moving monsters re-enacted the Battle of the Bulge behind hoardings which shivered with each impact. A tube station squatted on a third, its familiar brick-and-tile facade more than usually grubby in the drizzle.”
Tana French’s Dublin and the Irish Countryside
Reading any of French’s novels is like taking a trip to Ireland without the travel hassle. The flavor of Dublin and the Irish countryside comes through in her geographic descriptions, but for me, it’s her authentic Irish dialog that so effectively brings Ireland to life. An example I love is the local dialect used in the farming community in The Hunter: “If I’ve to listen to that gobshite, I’d want to be well marinated.”
Dennis Lehane’s Boston
Boston-born Dennis Lehane takes us to Boston in several of his mysteries. In my favorite, Small Mercies, Dennis Lehane dazzles with his collection of South Boston characters as they fight for their lives in their neighborhood run by local criminals. At the time, Boston was in the throes of the famous desegregation fight that tore the city apart in 1974. When the main character, Mary Pat, who is searching for her missing daughter, goes from her home in a poor South Boston neighborhood to Harvard Square, the ensuing culture clash as she walks among privileged student hippies is brilliantly brought to life. Later, Senator Ted Kennedy must run for his life after addressing a hostile crowd in City Hall Plaza. Overall, it’s a frightening tour of Boston and its neighborhoods in crisis.
Discover the Book
Henry dismisses her story as a foolish attempt to steal his money and, despite still being in love with her, tells her to get lost. But, when he comes home to find his apartment ransacked, he begins to think she may just be telling the truth.
What She’s Hiding is a harrowing journey through the glittering heights and shadowy corners where Manhattan’s legal world meets the dark underside of the city.
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