I don't consider myself a mystery reader, i.e., I don't devour them like free peanuts at Five Guys Burgers and Fries; but, now that I look at my book shelves, there are a lot of mysteries there. And if you ask me to recall whodunit in any of them, I'd be hard put to tell you.
But I do remember the settings: the mystical Buddhist backdrop of John Burdett and Sonchai Jitpleecheep's Bangkok, the fourth in the series which I'm reading now; the haunted bayous of James Lee Burke and Dave Robicheaux's New Iberia parish; the bustling, vibrant enclaves of Tarquin Hall and Vish Puri's Delhi; the dangerous streets and hip heydays of Chester Himes and Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones' Harlem; the blue collar bleakness of Dennis Lehane and Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro's Boston; the segregated slough of Walter Mosley and Easy Rawlins' post-war Los Angeles; the Scandanavian chill of Jo Nesbo and Harry Hole's modern-day Oslo; just to name a few.
So that's why I read them: for that strong sense of time and place that takes you beyond the plot and characters to a new land now uncovered by the author and discovered by the reader often for the first time. It's heady stuff--a real empathetic experience--finding not only the facts of somewhere else, but also the true feeling of its culture and people. That's what I've tried to evoke about the 1930s' small-town Florida in Secrets of San Blas, how it really was in the Panhandle before the highrises and the condos and the snowbirds and the ever-encroaching crunch of commercialism.
But I do remember the settings: the mystical Buddhist backdrop of John Burdett and Sonchai Jitpleecheep's Bangkok, the fourth in the series which I'm reading now; the haunted bayous of James Lee Burke and Dave Robicheaux's New Iberia parish; the bustling, vibrant enclaves of Tarquin Hall and Vish Puri's Delhi; the dangerous streets and hip heydays of Chester Himes and Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones' Harlem; the blue collar bleakness of Dennis Lehane and Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro's Boston; the segregated slough of Walter Mosley and Easy Rawlins' post-war Los Angeles; the Scandanavian chill of Jo Nesbo and Harry Hole's modern-day Oslo; just to name a few.
So that's why I read them: for that strong sense of time and place that takes you beyond the plot and characters to a new land now uncovered by the author and discovered by the reader often for the first time. It's heady stuff--a real empathetic experience--finding not only the facts of somewhere else, but also the true feeling of its culture and people. That's what I've tried to evoke about the 1930s' small-town Florida in Secrets of San Blas, how it really was in the Panhandle before the highrises and the condos and the snowbirds and the ever-encroaching crunch of commercialism.
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