The geography of crime novels

[John Bailey]

One of my favourite openings is well known, from Chandler's Red Wind, but
really marries a specific US geography to the psychology of the crime novel:
"There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry
Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair
and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every
booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving
knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even
get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge."

On Fri, 22 Oct. 2021, 10:33 am Joseph Tracy, <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> I find the Pynchon’s interest in the regions of NYC more compelling than
> that, but  definitely without the social and character variations they
> would lose their color and meaning. There’s a big tension between what was,
> the older businesses and neighborhoods and the adaptive creative bar and
> underground social scene, with it’s local color and character on one end of
> the spectrum and what is coming from new money, expensive hip anonymous
> modernist or franchised, safe, sterile. The change and desires that shape
> this NYC are everywhere and souped up on new markets created by computer
> tech married to older real estate based greed.  This war zone is in every
> big city and I think TP uses the geographic landscape to amplify the scale
> and direction of the underlying conflicts.
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Oct 21, 2021, at 6:11 PM, Mike Weaver <mike.weaver at zen.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> > Been there. Great book.
> >
> > But New York is the US city I'm least interested in exploring - read
> plenty of books set there but the city itself holds no allure, maybe
> because it comes across as all city, and flat. Same with Chicago. LA set
> stories range out into the wilds of mountain and desert, it has hills
> within.   Reading Bleeding Edge at the moment, it's all the characters that
> keep me reading - the geography doesn't grab me at all, up, the street,
> down the street, what's it matter, it's the interactions which drive it
> along not where they take place.
> >
> > On 21/10/2021 21:33, David Morris wrote:
> >>
> >> No subscription needed link:ink P uses the
> >>
> https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/10/17/reviews/991017.17mobilot.html?_r=2
> <
> https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/10/17/reviews/991017.17mobilot.html?_r=2
> >
> >>
> >> What Makes Him Tic?
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >> /The young narrator of this post-modern detective novel suffers from
> Tourette's syndrome./
> >> /
> >> /
> >> /
> >>
> >>      <
> http://barnesandnoble.bfast.com/booklink/click?sourceid=4773&ISBN=0385491832
> >
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >> *MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN
> >> *By Jonathan Lethem.
> >> 311 pp. New York:
> >> Doubleday. <mike.weaver at zen.co.uk <mailto:mike.weaver at zen.co.uk>>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> /
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>    Apart from being a lazy reader and crime novels being little
> >>    strain on
> >>    the brain, one reason I enjoy stories set in the US is exploring
> >>    different parts of the country which has fascinated me since I
> >>    discovered DC comics in the late 1950s and watched the Lone Ranger
> >>    and
> >>    Range Rider on the tube.
> >>
> >>    Having realised that Land's End is the nearest I'm likely to get
> >>    to the
> >>    US, earlier in the year I decided to explore it by crime novels,
> >>    starting with LA. With a list of lesser known LA based series,
> >>    reading
> >>    mostly using the Internet Archive Library I had Wiki and Google
> >>    Maps/Streetview open and gradually got the layout and look of LA
> >>    sorted
> >>    in my head.
> >>
> >>    I can't say I discovered any great prose or notable story telling but
> >>    two authors I'd recommend as a result are Barbara Serranella and
> >>    Timothy
> >>    Hallinan. Street life stories from the former and crim world
> >>    comedy from
> >>    the latter - a burglar who does PI jobs for those who can't go to the
> >>    police, i.e. other criminals - good fun. I read several
> >>    African-American
> >>    writers, which was good for social-economic perspectives but none as
> >>    writers or storytellers a patch on Walter Mosley.
> >>
> >>    So where next...
> >>
> >>    On 21/10/2021 17:14, Mark Kohut wrote:
> >>    >
> >>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/21/books/classic-crime-novels-that-still-thrill-today.html
> >>    <
> https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/21/books/classic-crime-novels-that-still-thrill-today.html
> >
> >>    > --
> >>    > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >>    <https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l>
> >>
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> >>
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>
>
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