Please welcome back
Jeanne of the Bristol
Public Library as she has some thoughts about the importance of place in a
mystery. This is part two of a two part guest post. If you missed part one last Saturday,
you should go read
it first and then come back here.
Location, Location,
Location: A Very Personal View of the
Power of Place—Part 2
If physical description doesn’t make an impression on the
geographically and directionally challenged, what does?
For me it’s cultural settings, and I
particularly enjoy those books that use their location to good advantage.
Given my fondness for cozy mysteries, many of
the books I read use a small town setting which is fine as long as I can
discern at least the region in which the book is set.
There are some stories where I don’t know if
the characters are in California or Connecticut, and it mars
my enjoyment of the book if I have to stop and
go back to the beginning to try to figure out where in the world I am.
I’m not a fan of generic small town.
Sometimes I’ve wondered if the author has ever visited some of the locations
used or if a publisher just thought it would be good to have a series set in,
say, Wisconsin.
Building a sense of place is more than just repeating the name
of the town or state, or sticking in some superficial or stereotypical
details. Weather is, of course, a big
tip off; but again, is it really always sultry in Georgia? Or always snowing in
Maine? There are some series which have never had a change in weather. I notice it most often in books set in the
South, when the weather is always sweltering. My Florida relatives assure me
that it does seem chilly in January, even if their chilly is low 60s.
Laurie Cass is working her way through the seasons in her Bookmobile Cat series, with vivid
snowstorms and spring mud. Clea Simon’s
Cambridge is also seasonal, though I remember best the howl of the winds and
bits of ice and snow that sting the face as Dulcie Schwartz makes her way down
the street in the Mister Grey series. Anne Hillerman’s Navajo characters are used
to the heat of a southwest summer, though outsiders not so much.
Food is good way of letting us know where our characters
are. If the characters always eat
burgers or tuna casserole or brownies, they could be anywhere. Throw in the occasional local delicacy, and
readers are reminded of location. In the
Mainely Needlepoint Mysteries by Lea
Wait, Angie chows down on comfort food of baked beans with the occasional
splurge with lobster (if someone else is buying) but also eats Tex-Mex from her
Arizona sojourn. Qwill in the Cat Who series by Lilian Jackson Braun
was fond of pasties, a delicacy I’d never heard of before reading those books.
Local custom and mores can also come into play. I just finished Betty Webb’s The Puffin of Death and was delighted
with the way she portrayed the Icelandic setting. Bryndis, a local zookeeper, helps American
Teddy navigate Icelandic society where flirting seems to be a general pastime
and there are apps to determine if the cute person is actually a close
relative. Other places have their own quirks, such as gathering at a private
home for a wake, baptisms in rivers, or ethnicities that add local color.
Finally, dialog and dialect are easy ways to express a
region, but a little can go a long way in that department. Speaking strictly for myself, I prefer the
use of idiom and local expression with only light dialect because it can be
difficult and tiresome to read the phonetic rendering for long periods of
time. The author also runs the risk of
making a character seem uneducated or ignorant, whether or not that is the
author’s intent. I like the way Carol
Miller handles it in her Moonshine
Mystery series: light dialect used occasionally and a bit of regional
terminology gets the point across. In
the No.1 Ladies’ Detective series,
McCall-Smith does a wonderful job of conveying the rhythms of speech in
Botswana—or what I assume they are, since I have no first-hand knowledge.
One author who pulled it all together for me was Valerie
Malmont. Her Tori Miracle novels had an
outsider bemused and/or bewildered by naming customs, peculiar foods,
unfamiliar idioms, and local history, but what really came through was
Malmont’s obvious love for the northern Appalachian region. Those qualities added a lot to the story as
far as I’m concerned and make her books particularly memorable.
These are just some of the things which, for me, help make a
book come alive. Your mileage may vary.
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