Location, location, location
Well, the last month has been strange and no mistake. Circumstances have meant the world has been rather dreamlike and unreal. Can’t believe it has only been a month, too. So much seems to have happened…and yet much of it doesn’t feel like it has really happened at all.
So, onwards.
Location seems to be a big selling point in some crime fiction these days, the city or town concerned receiving prominent coverage, usually on the cover with something like: ‘Puts Sheerness on the crime fiction map’. I’ve heard comments too that a new location is one of the first things that agents and publishers look for.
I have a couple of problems with this. One is, a drive for originality that means it might be that much harder to sell an Edinburgh novel, too mined by Rankin, or Oxford, too exhausted by Dexter’s Morse. And so many cities now have the writer that everyone associates with them. So you see the settings spread out to other cities, towns, locations that maybe aren’t quite the right setting, not big enough, not plausible enough for the crimes at hand. But hey, they’re new, no-one’s walked that beat before, and besides, it puts Hartlepool on the crime fiction map.
Other than the choice of location, the other problem is that having put that location at the heart of the novel, it’s very hard for the writer to avoid showing it off. After all, it’s what the readers are going to expect. Not a bad thing at all, to have the story grounded in vivid, compelling detail. But I’ve read a few too many where the writer puts you on an open-topped tour bus, and takes you to see the sights. Over here, on the left, the famous steps. There’ll be a chase here, later. If you look to your right now, you will see the museum. We won’t be going in there, too dull. But we’ll stop for lunch in this pub I know, for no other reason than well, I know it. But if you look now, down to the river, you will see the famous bridge, and of course it’s going to show up in the climactic scene. How could it not?
While I like reading novels with a setting that’s fresh, or a perspective that’s new (which is why I’ve read so much Eurocrime over the past year, I can hardly say otherwise), there’s a danger that so much attention is paid to the novelty of the setting that the essential honesty of the novel suffers. That you get a novel which spends so much time showing what Dorking that the people pale beside the scenary. Swap one set of landmarks for another, and you could be anywhere. Or nowhere.
Some of my favourite novels are set in places of the writer’s own invention, and don’t feel any less real for it. Sometimes, they feel more real for it. Perhaps the writers have spent less time on getting it accurate, and more time on getting it right.
Authenticity is over-rated. No, forget that. Authenticity is vital. It’s reality that is over-rated. What matters most is what is true, and good writing shows us this just as well in a place of the writer’s own creation as it does in any place you’ll find on a road atlas.
(Do you have any preference, either as a reader or a writer?)
March 26th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Did you read Clive James’ article in the New Yorker about international crime fiction? He shares your misgivings about setting for novelty’s sake, but he’s not broad-minded enough to allow for crime writing such as Eliot Pattison’s that is more than just a guidebook. You’ll find the article here: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/04/09/070409crbo_books_james?currentPage=1
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Detectives Beyond Borders
“Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home”
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
March 27th, 2008 at 12:17 am
Thanks Peter, I have read that article. While I think he does have relevant points to make about some crime fiction, he broadens that out to encompass the whole of the genre, which I think is just a little ridiculous.
(Any readers who don’t already know it, do check out Peter’s Detectives Beyond Borders for some great posts about crime fiction with an international perspective)
April 2nd, 2008 at 2:11 am
Iain, good post, and I agree with you. When books read like tour guides, my eyes glaze over. The setting has to fit the book–more for atmosphere and mood than for specific details. I don’t care about landmarks and other such details–but I want the book to feel real as far as the mood and the way the people in the area act.
In my own books and stories, the locales were picked to fit what the fictional work needed, and they’re all over the place. Boston, Dublin, Kansas, Colorado, California, New York, Hell, places worse than hell, etc.
My first book, Fast Lane, was set primarily in Denver, but also Oklahoma and Mexico City. Denver was needed, because Johnny Lane needed to be in a Western City–the east coast wouldn’t work for him.
My second book was Boston-based–and again, the story needed that. The one bad review I had for that one was from PW, and it touches on something you commented on earlier–I was castigated by setting my novel in the same setting that Lehane and Parker uses for their PI novels. The thing is, though, my book starts off as crime and quickly moves into horror, but I guess the reviewer never got that far. Too bad, because otherwise he could’ve compared me negatively to Stephen King, which I would’ve taken as an honor.
My latest book, Small Crimes, takes place in a fictional town in Vermont, and it needed to be fictional because the claustrophobic atmosphere of a small town was needed, and also with all the corruption in the town I’d be sued up the wazoo if I set it in a real area.
A still unsold (drat!) book of mine, Caretaker of Lorne Field, takes place in a fictional New England setting, which it needs because of the overwhelming sense of dread the area needs to create. Plus it needs to be an unreal place, with the possibility of magic.
My next book being published by Serpent’s Tail, Pariah, has both real and fictional settings–the majority of the book takes place in Boston and New York, but a fictional setting within New Hampshire is used, and is created as a place of horror.
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Good to hear from you Dave. It’s rubbish, isn’t it, that because Parker and Lehane set novels in Boston that it’s somehow seen as ‘done’. If nothing else, that kind to attitude can drive authors into one of the traps I was talking about - going for a location for the sake of novelty, even though it might not suit the story that they are writing or their ability (due to familiarity etc) to tell it.
The setting for CARETAKER OF LORNE FIELD works really well, in my opinion.
And for anyone reading this who isn’t familiar with Dave’s name (any fans of short crime fiction will know him from the great Hardluck Stories), do yourself a favour and check out SMALL CRIMES.