Hello book friends! Today, I have a guest post authored by my friend, Skye Alexander, sharing how the setting of books can be so important to the tale. Hope you enjoy it and will think about reading one of Skye's mysteries. I'm going to try to have a review of the second one, What the Walls Know, very soon.
Note: Skye also shared this article on the Ladies of Mystery blog here. I'm always happy to know of a new-to-me blog featuring mystery writers. Take a look!
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The real estate agent’s axiom about the importance of “location, location, location” holds true for me, too, as a mystery writer––usually the setting is the first thing I establish in a novel. The place where a story occurs provides a backdrop for the action and creates ambiance. It also grounds the tale in a time/space framework with a history, culture, and physical features that dictate what can or cannot happen there. A crime that transpires in a seventeenth-century French chateau, for instance, will be different from one that takes place on the mean streets of Al Capone’s Chicago or in a California mining town during the Gold Rush.
Sometimes the setting assumes a life of its own and becomes a character in the story, such as the marsh in Delia Owens’s Where the Crawdads Sing and the Four Corners in Tony Hillerman’s novels. In some cases, the setting serves as an antagonist, like the Dust Bowl in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and the Parisian flood in Sarah Smith’s Knowledge of Water. The environment challenges the protagonist and either helps or hinders her efforts to solve the crime––or to stay alive.
Much as I enjoy reading about Louise Penny’s fictitious town of Three Pines, Quebec, and Susan Oleksiw’s Hotel Delite in Kovalam, South India, I didn’t want to limit my series to only one setting. Consequently, I created a cast of New York Jazz Age musicians whom wealthy people hire to perform at special events. Each stint takes the entertainers to a different location where they’re presented with a unique set of obstacles and opportunities.
The most recent novel in my Lizzie Crane mystery series, What the Walls Know, is set in a spooky castle in October of 1925. When the musicians accept an invitation to perform at a Halloween party there, they have no idea they’ll be trapped on an isolated peninsula with real-life wizards, witches, ghosts, fortune-tellers––and a murderer. The actual neo-Gothic Hammond Castle in Gloucester, Massachusetts inspired me, and I incorporated its magnificent pipe organ and some other notable features into the story. The oceanside estate of the plumbing magnate Richard Crane prompted the first book in my series, Never Try to Catch a Falling Knife. Two future novels in the series, The Goddess of Shipwrecked Sailors and Running in the Shadows, take place in Salem, Massachusetts. This city’s colorful history offered up intriguing plot elements, including the clipper ship trade and the notorious smuggling tunnels that once ran beneath the old town.
For the sake of authenticity, I physically visit each place mentioned in my novels––every house, store, hotel, restaurant, church, library, museum, park, railway station, and cemetery. If it ever existed and still does, I’ve been there. In Never Try to Catch a Falling Knife, my characters eat lunch at a resort that unfortunately burned down in the 1950s, dashing my hopes for a site visit. Luckily, though, I located an elderly gentleman whose family owned the resort when he was young and he kindly spent an evening recounting the “good old days” with me.
Book Blurb:
Interesting! I am impressed that Sky visits each setting personally. Adds authenticity. I have both of the first two books and keep meaning to start them. Will do soon.
ReplyDeleteGayle, I keep hoping that at some point you can come visit here in Kerrville and perhaps I can introduce you to Skye. She likes meeting other mystery readers. :-)
DeleteThis was a fun read. Place is so important and there are some series I love because of the place especially now that I haven't had a chance to travel these past couple of years, it's so nice to be able to settle into a mystery that has a strong sense of place that I feel as if I'm there! Will have to add Skye's books to my TBR list.
ReplyDeleteWhen Skye and I talked about this post, I shared that I completely agreed with her about setting. Many books are locked into my memories either because of the setting or how I learned about the setting through the book. She lived in that Northeast area for many years and knows the locations she mentions. I hope you'll think about reading her mysteries, Iliana.
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