The Sun-Sentinel dubbed Fields’ first novel the Best Debut Mystery of the Year, and further noted: “Buckle your seatbelts for an off-road trip full of adrenaline. Tough and determined to make her way in today’s Wild West, Josie is the type of police chief you’d want in your hometown, a gutsy new heroine who would be friends with Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon and probably Lori Armstrong’s Mercy Gunderson, too.” The Territory also earned a slough of starred reviews from the trades, including one from Publishers Weekly, whose reviewer observed: “Fields builds suspense with a well-wrought cast of characters who deal with deadly violence that’s particularly frightening for being all-too-believable. And no one does it better than Josie Gray, who persists in the face of unspeakable danger. Readers will want to see much more of her.” Library Journal also noted: “Fields’s rich plotting, nonstop action, and deft characterizations show the personal side of the larger issue of drug cartels on both sides of the border.”

Fields’ second series installment likewise earned critical acclaim. Booklist observed: “Noteworthy for the delineation of the west Texas desert country and the well-drawn cast of characters; Josie Gray is a protagonist worth following.” Further praise came from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: “Captivating. … Fields deftly balances the intriguing intimate relationships among her characters with the broader themes of industrial corruption and greed. With her wild desert settings and her thrilling plot, Fields’ novel is situated somewhere between Western terrain and mystery territory.”

Welcome to Scene of the Crime, Tricia. Lets start things off with a description of your connection to your specific city or locale. How did you come to live there or become interested in it?

The premise for my mystery series is to explore life along the border with Mexico given the current violence and terror caused by the cartels. Juarez, Mexico is considered the most dangerous non-warzone city in the world. And, it is just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. What is amazing to me is that the cartel violence has largely been kept across the border. My fear is, if the cartels do make their way north and establish cells in the US, how will we ever push them back? The money and resources at their disposal is hard to fathom. I’ve been watching the drama in Mexico for many years now. I watched President Fox and President Calderon win elections based upon their ability to stop the cartels, but the cartels have only grown more powerful, spreading their empires further.

I became fascinated with the kind of law enforcement officer it would take to lead one of the small, understaffed, underfunded border town police departments. Granted, the violence is mostly across the border, but much of our 2,000 mile border with Mexico is separated by the Rio Grande, a strip of river eaten away by salt cedar and poor irrigation practices: easy to cross. So when the violence does spread into the US, how do we deal with it? How is daily life impacted? And to up the ante, how might a female chief in a profession typically populated by men, handle the stress?

All of these questions led to the formation of Artemis, Texas, a fictional town located by two present-day ghost towns in far

West Texas landscape

West Texas. The town is located near the Big Bend National Park, an amazing park with canyons that rival parts of the Grand Canyon. The landscape is extreme – from canyons to mountain ranges strewn across the wide open Chihuahuan desert. I love the area, and the people that live in this remote corner of the world. What a perfect place to spin conflict and set the scene for murder.

How do you incorporate location in your fiction? Do you pay overt attention to it in certain scenes, or is it a background inspiration for you?

I’m very conscious of writing about the region, the desert and my fictional city of Artemis. Each of these influences the behavior and actions of the characters in the books as I have developed them. Dust storms and mud slides, drought and hundred year floods, heat and isolation, these extremes come together inside Josie and define her in ways that she can’t describe, but that she feels at her core. She’ll never leave Artemis. She belongs in the desert.

Of the novels you have written set in this location, do you have a favorite book or scene that focuses on the place? Could you quote a short passage or give an example of how the location figures in your novels?

Big Bend National Park, West Texas

The first book in the series, The Territory, sets up the premise for all books to come. Following is a paragraph from that book that explains the title, and lets readers know the specific area that the series covers.

“Josie knew prosecuting crimes over international borders was mired in paperwork, frustration, and pools of money her own department didn’t have. Over the past year, as the border violence increased, the trust among the two cities’ law enforcement agencies had deteriorated. Both countries found the other’s legal system lacking. Mexico blamed the American lust for drugs and lack of gun laws, and the U.S. blamed Mexico’s corrupt government and loss of control on the drug cartels. The blame was somewhere in the middle, so in a strange way, it made sense that the problems had collected and festered like an open wound in the hundred- mile strip of middle ground the locals called the Territory.”

Who are your favorite writers, and do you feel that other writers influenced you in your use of the spirit of place in your novels?

One of my other favorite mystery writers is James Lee Burke. His books are set in Louisiana, in New Iberia Parish. I’ve read so many of his books I feel as if I know his characters and the towns they inhabit as well as I know my own hometown. Reading and studying James Lee Burke is how I learned to develop characters as a natural extension of where they live. Dave Robicheaux, would not be the same cop in Artemis, Texas that he is in New Iberia. And, the same idea is true for Josie. Her introspective, anti-social ways wouldn’t play out in the same way if she were to move to L.A. or Manhattan. The desert feeds her personality, allows her to have the space and freedom to be comfortable with who she is. It isn’t that Josie Gray couldn’t live in New Orleans, but she couldn’t be herself.

If you could live anywhere, where would it be and why?

At heart, I’m a small-town Midwesterner. I live in a log cabin on a farm in Indiana where they’ll probably bury me out back under the pine trees someday. I love the seasons in Indiana, even the icy winters. Nothing cozier than the fireplace blazing in the midst of a snow storm and a cautious drive to town for supplies. I love the way that life slows down in the winter – and then spring fever hits with a vengeance come March 1^st and anxious gardeners put tomato plants out too early and mow grass that still has the chance of collecting snow before winter loses her final grip. The crocus pop, then the daffodils and tulips and red bud trees. I like the rolling hills and green pasture on our farm, the trails through the woods that lead to morels each May. I think it’s the orderly progression of the seasons, and the constantly looking forward to what comes next that I enjoy so much.

People have asked why I didn’t set my series in Indiana. I wrote a mystery set in small town Indiana, but it didn’t work. I take too much for granted where I live. It was harder to find the nuance and the quirkiness of the people and the places. For me, it’s much harder to notice what makes a place unique when I’ve lived there most of my life. West Texas was a perfect choice for me: I find it beautiful, exotic, completely different from the place that I live now, and it’s a place I enjoy visiting as much for the location as the people. And, I now have a great excuse to travel 1,500 miles each year to visit.

What’s next for your Josie?

Book three in the series will be released next March. The working title is, Wrecked. Here’s the advance book cover description:

Josie Gray experiences every cop’s worst nightmare when her longtime boyfriend, Dillon Reese, is discovered missing, his secretary murdered. Josie relinquishes the case to a fellow officer due to her intimate involvement with the victim. In doing so, she loses her role as primary decision maker during a case that matters more than any other. As the department splits over the focus of the investigation, Josie struggles privately with her own culpability for ignoring suspicions she had about Dillon’s whereabouts the night he disappeared. If she had acted on her instincts, an innocent woman could still be alive.

Josie fears her past involvement with a Mexican cartel may be at the heart of the case. Not until a tough talking ex-cop from Mexico becomes involved do the pieces in the investigation begin to mesh. As she zeros in on a local boy’s missing father, she is shocked to learn she was conned by her worst adversary, and must now negotiate for her lover’s life in a twisted double-cross involving millions. When the politics of law enforcement threaten to paralyze her ability to do the right thing, she makes a cross border trip that puts everything she loves at risk: her job, her lover, her life.

Find out more about the series at Tricia’s homepage.

Mackenzie hit the ground running with this “remarkable series,” as the New York Times Book Review called the Jade de Jong books. Her 2008 publication, Random Violence, featuring the gutsy PI is set in contemporary Johannesburg; the novel earned local acclaim. South Africa’s Sunday Times declared that this debut “excels in its ability to translate our propensity for violent crime into a clever plot that could take place only in South Africa.” Released in the United States in 2010, Random Violence earned a starred review in Publishers Weekly, with the critic terming it a “triumphant debut,” and further noting, “Readers will wish Jade a long fictional career.”

Mackenzie’s 2009 title, My Brother’s Keeper, a finalist in the Best Paperback Original category of the International Thriller Awards, is another gritty novel featuring a psychopathic villain and also set in Johannesburg, but this one does not feature Jade. Mackenzie, however, reprises her resilient PI in Stolen Lives, in which Jade is hired as a bodyguard by a wealthy housewife whose husband has disappeared. That novel was published in the U.S. in 2011, and is a “page turner of superior power,” according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “Under Mackenzie’s deft hand, Jo’berg and Jade crackle with frenetic energy,” declared Publishers Weekly of the same novel.

The third in the series, The Fallen, came out in the U.S. in 2012, and again earned Mackenzie critical acclaim. Fellow novelist Tess Gerritsen called it a “white-knuckle thriller with an utterly chilling finale,” while Publishers Weekly enthused: “Searing… Mackenzie’s blend of contemporary South African issues with Jade’s inner turmoil is pitch perfect, and the true cliffhanger will leave fans eager for more.”

Jassy, welcome to Scene of the Crime, and thanks for coming on board to investigate spirit of place in crime fiction. First, could you describe your connection to Johannesburg?

I’m originally from Zimbabwe, but my family moved to Johannesburg when I was eight. Apart from a few years spent overseas, I’ve lived here ever since. Jo’burg is an enormous, sprawling city but I love to drive, and over the years I think I’ve been to just about every part of it.

The juxtaposition of wealth and poverty makes it a fascinating, if somewhat disturbing, social study. In ten minutes, you can drive from the most ostentatious five-star hotel in the wealthy CBD of Sandton, to an informal settlement with tumbledown shacks cobbled together from cardboard and corrugated iron.

What things about Johannesburg make it unique and a good physical setting in your books?

Jo’burg has a dark side – its high violent crime rate – and this is what makes it such a compelling location for a thriller writer. The city came into existence when vast gold deposits were discovered in the Witwatersrand basin. Unlike most other major cities, it is nowhere near a waterway or even a water supply. It was built in an arid, treeless dustbowl. One of the most interesting facts about Johannesburg is that, over the years, its residents planted so many trees that today it is officially classified as a forest.

If Cape Town can be compared to San Francisco, Johannesburg can definitely be compared to New York. The city has an amazing energy, even if it is somewhat shallow and superficial. Everything here has to be big and bling, from the cars to the hairstyles to the houses, and this translates to our crime as well. Threaten a Jo’burg resident with a knife and he’ll laugh at you. When we get robbed, it’s by large gangs armed with automatic weapons.

Did you consciously set out to use Johannesburg as a “character” in your books, or did this grow naturally out of the initial story or stories?

I set out to make Jo’burg a character in my books. I wanted to paint a picture of the city for international readers, from its gridlocked heart to its wild rural outskirts; from the beggars holding cardboard signs at street corners to the new rich speeding uncaringly by in their SUVs. The city has so many faces – the beautiful old Parktown mansions designed by renowned architect Herbert Baker, the elegant span of the recently built Nelson Mandela Bridge – the largest cable-stayed bridge in Southern Africa. Then there are the crumbling buildings in Hillbrow, long abandoned by their original owners, their walls patterned with graffiti and blackened by rogue fires. And, of course, those dreadful high-walled, fake-Tuscan housing estates that are mushrooming in the wealthy northern suburbs and beginning to characterize the “new” Jo’burg.

How do you incorporate location in your fiction? Do you pay overt attention to it in certain scenes, or is it a background inspiration for you?

Some of my scenes are set in specific places and I have enormous fun researching and describing these. The Catz Pajamas in Melville, which appears in Random Violence, is a real restaurant and it really does serve the best nachos in town. Other locations are fictitious, but they are still based on the reality that I see and read about every day. For me, scene setting is a lot like dreaming. In my dreams, some scenes are crystal clear and familiar, while others are shadowy and indistinct – and, of course, any dream can turn into a nightmare.

How does Jade de Jong interact with her surroundings? Is she a native, a blow-in, a reluctant or enthusiastic inhabitant, cynical about it, a booster? And conversely, how does the setting affect your protagonist?

Jade de Jong is a die-hard Jo’burg woman. Like me, she loves the city despite its flaws. Like me, she’s been a victim of crime herself. The difference is that I stay behind a computer and write, while Jade ventures out onto the streets to investigate crimes and occasionally dispense her own brand of vigilante justice.

Has there been any local reaction to your works?

I’ve been fortunate that my books such as Random Violence and My Brother’s Keeper  have had excellent local reviews. A reviewer from the Sunday Times was kind enough to say, with tongue firmly in cheek, “Mackenzie deserves a vote of thanks from Jozi residents for restoring their city to its rightful position at the top of the crime pile.”

Of the novels you have set in Johannesburg, do you have a favorite book or scene that focuses on the place? Could you quote a short passage or give an example of how the location figures in your novels?

From Random Violence:

“Whiteboy shifted his weight in the seat and turned the heater down. He slowed at a traffic light. This was Diepsloot. On his left. A dark, smoky labyrinth of tin shacks and cardboard walls and the shells of cars. From the smell of it, the residents weren’t only burning wood to keep warm. They were burning anything they could lay their hands on, from garbage to car tires. A few houses had electric light, but their power was stolen, channeled down from the main lines via illegal cables. Every so often, he knew, some power thief would hit the headlines by getting fried when trying that trick.

“Taxis bumped off the tarmac and stopped and started in an endless rhythm, floods of passengers emerging from the doors, hunched and hurried. He saw two prostitutes standing at the light. Their short, brightly colored skirts revealed brown chunky legs, and their arms were wrapped around their bodies for warmth.

“’Okay,’ Whiteboy said to himself. ‘Where does a white man go to find trouble in this place?’”

And another one:

“The Townview police station was dusty and dirty, with yellowing notices on the wall informing the public about things nobody bothered to read. David shook his head as he thought what Jade’s father would do if he saw the average police station today and how it compared to the ones he had commanded.

“Commissioner de Jong would have exploded in a bout of furious energy, a trait that Jade had inherited and, because of that, always amused him. He would have scrubbed the place down, put in a request for new chairs, ripped the old posters off the walls. He would have repaired and patched and given the place a fresh coat of paint. Removed those dusty old blinds and brightened the place up. And knowing Jade’s father, if it still wasn’t bright enough, he would have knocked another couple of windows into the wall himself without bothering to ask permission first.

“David’s greeting was not returned by the large lady constable at the front desk. She looked up at him with dull eyes.

“’Yes?’

“’I’d like to see your station commander.’

“’In connection with?’

“’Private matter. And urgent,’ he added, as she heaved herself to her feet and lumbered across the room. She was unfit and unkempt and her uniform was stretched to its limit in every direction.”

Who are your favorite writers, and do you feel that other writers influenced you in your use of the spirit of place in your novels?

I love thrillers with a strong sense of place, and I’ve always believed that place is an essential aspect of a crime novel because crime is a reflection of society, and society in turn is a product of its environment.

My favorite writers today include Lee Child, Jeffery Deaver and Harlan Coben, as well as local author Deon Meyer. I remember being spellbound by the descriptions of the Florida Keys in John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee series, and fascinated by Edward X Delaney’s New York in the novels by Lawrence Sanders.

Jassy, once again many thanks for taking the time to be with Scene of the Crime, and good luck with the U.S. publication of Pale Horses.

For more information about Jassy, visit her homepage.

In Perfect Hatred, Gage combines a suicide bombing with the assassination of a regional gubernatorial candidate to deliver what fellow writer Timothy Hallinan dubbed a “perfect thriller.” Kirkus Reviews also had praise for this installment, noting: “In his own hard-boiled, agreeably literate and tourist-cautioning fashion, [Gage has] made South America’s largest nation accessible to readers who might otherwise never have been exposed to its jungles—both the wild and urban varieties.” BookPage selected the novel as its mystery pick of the month, commenting: “Well-written police procedurals set in an exotic location . . . what’s not to like? Think of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct transplanted to Brasília, and you wouldn’t be far off, although Gage’s stories exhibit a somewhat more serious bent…. hands down the first ‘do not miss’ mystery of 2013!”

In the series’ fifth installment, the 2011 A Vine in the Blood, he weaves a taut thriller set just prior to the FIFA World Cup played in Brazil. The Wall Street Journal dubbed this series entry “hard-hitting” and “atmospheric,” as well as “lively[and] action-filled.” The reviewer went on to note that Silva remains the “greatest appeal” of the series. “Even after five books and many glimpses into his past and present, he remains an enigma. The reader never knows what the detective might or might not do in order to balance the scales of justice.” Every Bitter Thing is “Gage’s gripping fourth mystery to feature quick-witted Chief Insp. Mario Silva,” according to Publishers Weekly. The New York Times called Silva “irresistible,” in its review of the same title. Other books in the series include Dying Gasp, from 2009, Buried Strangers, from 2008, and Blood of the Wicked, from 2007. Leighton’s books have earned praise from many corners. The New York Times found the series “top notch,” Publishers Weekly dubbed the books “intelligent and subtle,” and Booklist called it an “outstanding series,” adding, “Silva just may be South America’s Kurt Wallander.”

Leighton, it is a real pleasure to have you on Scene of the Crime again. Let’s start out with your connection to Brazil. You offer incredible insights to the country along with page-turning plots. It’s clear that you write from personal experience–I mean, as regards spirit of place.

You’re right. In 1973, I was offered a job in Brazil. I’d been working in The Netherlands for five years. I was ready for a change. I was thirty-one years old.

I arrived in São Paulo in the springtime. I fell in love with the country – and a girl. We’ve been married for thirty-three years. The language we use at home is Portuguese. The years have taken us, sometimes for extended periods, to many other places around the world, but Brazil is the place we always think of as home.

What things about Brazil make it unique and a good physical setting in your books?

Wouldn’t you agree that every place, when you come right down to it, is unique? Even small towns in America? On a larger scale, Brazil, like the United States, is a melting pot of many cultures. But there the similarity ends. The mix, for one thing, is entirely different. Six times as many slaves were imported into Brazil than were ever imported into North America. They’ve had a tremendous impact on culture and religion. Brazil, like the United States is immense. (Larger, in fact, than the continental 48.) But, again, the similarity ends there. Brazil is temperate in climate from north to south and from east to west. It hardly ever snows. There are few high mountains and only small deserts. Most people think of it as rural, but it isn’t. It’s highly urban. São Paulo is the largest city in the southern hemisphere. Brazil, like the United States is rich. But the distribution of wealth is an entirely different matter. Brazil is a rich country full of poor people. The contrasts go on and on.

As a physical setting, gosh, where am I to begin? We’ve got the Pantanal, a place that puts the Everglades to shame, we’ve got the Amazon, the mightiest river in the world, and we’ve got Rio de Janeiro. I’ve been to Capetown and to Sydney, two truly beautiful harbor cities. They can’t hold a candle to Rio. And speaking of Rio, how about Carnival? Forget about Ringling Brothers, the circus. Carnival in Rio really is “the greatest show on earth”.

Did you consciously set out to Brazil as a “character” in your books, or did this grow naturally out of the initial story or stories?

My first “foreign” language wasn’t Portuguese, it was German. Shortly after that, I learned Dutch. I noticed, early on, that people can be different “characters” in their second or third tongue. You can be talking English to a Dutchman, for example, and think that he doesn’t have a good sense of humor.  But, if you talk to the same man in Dutch, you suddenly discover that Dutchmen are masters of understatement, and that much of their humor is based on it. Unfortunately, much of that humor can’t be effectively translated  (into English at any rate).

What I’m getting at here, is that the culture and the language are intimately related and both of them are heavily influenced by the location.

I live in Brazil much of the time. I may have an American passport, but I am more Brazilian than I am anything else. I see the world with that perspective.

It’s bound to come out in my writing – and it’s not conscious. I don’t plan to write “Brazilian books”. I simply write books from the perspective of a Brazilian. The difference is that I write them in English. And that, too, has an influence on the end result.  (Don’t get me started on this one, Syd. I could go on for hours.)

How do you incorporate location in your fiction? Do you pay overt attention to it in certain scenes, or is it a background inspiration for you?

I don’t spend much time on description. I have, personally, an aversion to what I call “I was there fiction”, the sort of thing that’s written by foreigners for foreigners. We’ve all read it, haven’t we? And it’s boring as hell.

I do pay overt attention to location when I think there’s something to be gained.

Like what?

Well, for example, moving the story along, setting motivation, or telling people something about a given place that might amuse or surprise them.

How does your protagonist interact with his/her surroundings? Is she a native, a blow-in, a reluctant or enthusiastic inhabitant, cynical about it, a booster? And conversely, how does the setting affect your protagonist?

With few exceptions, all of my characters are Brazilians. They act and interact like Brazilians. And, if you want to know more than that, you have to read the books.

I wrote, once, about an American FBI agent. I occasionally write about Argentineans, because the Brazilians have a great rivalry going on with the Argentineans, and jokes about them are very much a part of the culture.

Has there been any local reaction to your works? What do local (ie those who actually live in Brazil) reviewers think, for example. Are your books in translation in Brazil, and if so, what reaction have they gotten from reviewers?

I get fan mail from Brazilians who read my work in English. Many of them tell me they love it. I’ve never heard from any, but it’s likely there are an equal, perhaps even a greater number, who hate it. The reason that some might (probably do) hate it is that much of what I write is highly critical of the country that I (and my potential detractors) love so much.

How dare you criticize our country?

Like that.

I haven’t been translated into Portuguese. Not yet. But I expect I will be some day. And then we’ll see what the local reviewers think. I’m hoping they’ll like my work as much as the American reviewers do. And I think they might. No one in Brazil today is writing the kind of stuff I’m writing. For the market, it’s innovative.

Of the novels you have written set Brazil, do you have a favorite book or scene that focuses on the place? Could you quote a short passage or give an example of how the location figures in your novels?

No, honestly, I don’t have a favorite book or scene that focuses on place. In a recent review of Dying Gasp, Hallie Ephron wrote in the Boston Globe:

“Readers will smell the steam and stench of the Amazon…”

I saw that, and I thought, Did I really do that? Well, I guess maybe I did, or Hallie wouldn’t have said it. But I certainly wasn’t aware of it at the time. Here’s a short passage about my hometown, São Paulo. I drew it from Blood of the Wicked, my first book.

“In the largest city south of the equator, springtime is generally too warm for comfort, and the spring of 1978 was no exception. In those days, automobile emission standards had yet to be established. To make it worse, a thermal inversion persisted over the city for twenty-nine of October’s thirty-one days. The resulting smog reduced visibility to less than five hundred meters. Eyes stung. People buried their noses in handkerchiefs and addressed each other with gravelly voices emerging out of irritated throats. In Liberdade, the Japanese neighborhood, residents took to wearing surgical masks. The black waters of the Tietê, the river that flowed in a sluggish crescent around the city’s western boundaries, generated vapors strong enough to bring nausea to queasy stomachs. Socks, clean and white in the morning, were peeled off at night, begrimed with black soot so fine that it penetrated shoe leather. The smell of rotting garbage hung in the air. It was a typical springtime in São Paulo.”

You can see why some Brazilians might not like what I write, can’t you?

Who are your favorite writers, and do you feel that other writers influenced you in your use of the spirit of place in your novels?

My favorite writers? Hmm, Syd. That’s a tough one.

There’s a remark from Louis XIV: “Every time I promote a man, I create one ingrate – and a thousand enemies.” I ascribe to that. When it comes to contemporary writers, I have to give you lots and lots of names – or none at all. Then, at least, all of my friends in this business are going to be absolutely, positively convinced that they’re all on my list. (And you are, my dear friends, you are.)

So ya know what? Of living writers, I shall give you no names at all.

I can, however, safely praise a man who’s dead: Eric Ambler. His sense of place and his ability to develop character continue to be an inspiration to me after all these years. I refer your readers to the series on “forgotten novels” published on the website The Rap Sheet. There are reviews there of three of Ambler’s books. One of those reviews is mine.

Thanks, Leighton, for a stimulating discussion.

For more information on Leighton Gage, see his homepage.

However, that work aside, Land has concentrated his attentions since 2009 on a series featuring fifth-generation Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong, “a tough original heroine,” according to Publishers Weekly in a review of the first book in that series, Strong Enough to Die. When we meet her, Caitlin has had a career change after being wounded in a shootout and after hearing her husband has been killed in Iraq. Now a psychological therapist, she discovers her husband is not so dead after all and further developments reveal a terrifying plot that reaches into every home and threatens the very core of the country, making Caitlin don her Ranger uniform once again. “The revelations are constant, the characters compelling and the action fast and furious,” noted Publishers Weekly. A Booklist reviewer agreed, terming this series opener “incredibly energetic and readable.” The second series installment, Strong Justice, also won critical acclaim, with Publishers Weekly calling it “intense [and] skillfully plotted.” Likewise, the third series addition, Strong at the Break, was praised by reviewers. Library Journal lauded this novel for its “riveting action and suspense, vivid characters, and a fast-moving plot.” Fourth in the series, Strong Vengeance from 2012, similarly “grabs you by the throat and never lets up,” according to Bookreporter.com.

Jon, it is great to have you with us at Scene of the Crime. I’ve been a fan for years, especially of the Kamal books. Maybe today, however, we can focus on the Caitlin Strong books. First, could you described your connection to the setting for those books?

To be totally honest, I don’t actually have a direct connection to Texas.  My desire to write the Caitlin Strong novels was based on my long-time fascination with the Texas Rangers.  That said, Texas offers so many wonderful and varying settings, from the scrub brush of the deserts and prairies to the cosmopolitan nature of the cities to the unique beauty of San Antonio itself.  I have made trips down there since starting to write Caitlin but I’ve also developed a nice stable of friends who are great at answering far more questions than I could have answer on my own.

What things about Texas make it unique and a good physical setting in your books?

Again, it’s hard for me to separate Texas from the Texas Rangers.  This is especially germane because Rangers are responsible for such wide swaths of territory that in writing about them you don’t suffer the same limitations you might ordinarily encounter in writing about typical cops or investigators.  There’s an old saying that a Ranger’s jurisdiction is as far as his (or in my case “her”) horse can ride.  That’s a car today but the principle’s the same.  There’s also a lot in Texas that remains unchanged, almost primitive.  And that allows for tremendous contrast in the places where Caitlin Strong is off pursuing bad guys and fighting her latest battles.

Did you consciously set out to use Texas as a “character” in your books, or did this grow naturally out of the initial story or stories?

That’s a great question and, yes, it’s exactly what I was trying to do.  Kind of become for Texas what James Lee Burke is for southern Louisiana and the Bayou.  The key when weaving a setting into the texture of the story so completely, is that it needs to be organic, not forced.  For example, where would Caitlin buy boots for the oldest son of Cort Wesley Masters on his birthday (Allen’s Boots in Austin)?  Where might Caitlin meet her captain, D.W. Tepper, for breakfast (a diner in Marble Falls that features afternoon happy hour for their famous homemade pies)?

How do you incorporate location in your fiction? Do you pay overt attention to it in certain scenes, or is it a background inspiration for you?

Wow, I’ve never really thought of it that way myself!  I think setting, or location, needs to be organic to the story.  See, for me everything is about story and I don’t really pay overt attention to where I’m going to place certain scenes.  Setting for me is a function of plot and characters.  The story dictates where my characters need to go and thus where I’m going to set scenes.  That said, my college mentor, the great Shakespeare scholar Elmer Blistein, used to read my early books and then tell me all the places I’d been and all the places I hadn’t been.  He told me you can get the sights and sounds right from research but you can’t get the smells.  And ever since then I’ve been cognizant of incorporating all senses into my descriptions.  For instance, the scent of the air before a Texas thunderstorm or smell of mesquite as Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong is driving through the desert.  But you can’t possibly see or visit everything you need in a book, which is why Google is the greatest invention ever for writers like me. If I want to know about shade trees in West Texas I Google that and inevitably find what I’m looking for.

How does Caitlin interact with her surroundings? Is she a native, a blow-in, a reluctant or enthusiastic inhabitant, cynical about it, a booster? And conversely, how does the setting affect Caitlin?

Caitlin Strong is a native Texan and as a Texas Ranger she is intimately familiar with her surroundings. The state of Texas is the perfect setting for her because she’s a big, complex, ever-evolving, conflicted, and sometimes dark hero. I think almost all those adjectives describe Texas itself in the same way that Cormac McCarthy used similar settings to cover moral ambiguity and the hopelessness of human nature in No Country for Old Men.  In that book, and equally wondrous film, the dream image of Ed Tom Bell’s father riding out ahead of him is unique to Texas because how many places are there in the country left unspoiled and unchanged, where there are still open spaces and badlands left to ride.  So in that respect Texas becomes a perfectly apt metaphor.

Has there been any local reaction to your works?

I’ve always been very fortunate in getting tremendously positive feedback about my sense of place.  Before Caitlin Strong, I wrote a series of books set mostly in the Middle East and was amazed by the compliments I got about descriptions of places I’d actually never been in.  Like the great cartoonist Milton Caniff, I consider myself an armchair Marco Polo.  Credibility of setting is just as important as credibility of plot and character.

Have you ever made any goofs in depicting your location or time period? Please share–the more humorous the better (we all have).

Oh boy, you know me too well!  Way back, in the pre-Google days, I did a book called Labyrinth, the first of ten books I did for Random House, where I had a five-page chase scene in which it took the hero twenty minutes to go from one location to another that turned out to be around the corner!  Fortunately, it was caught in time for me to fix it.  The bottom line is nobody gets everything right.  The goal is to do just about everything right enough so you don’t lose credibility with the reader.  One mistake I made that didn’t get caught in time was having a character wielding a 20mm Vulcan mini-gun.  Cool scene, sure.  Except a 20mm Vulcan weights 2,000 pounds and is the size of a Volkswagen!  Oh well . . .

Do you have a favorite book or scene that focuses on the place? Could you quote a short passage or give an example of how the location figures in your novels?

The short answer is no, not one book in particular.  I think I’ve gotten better and better at setting as my books have progressed with my Caitlin Strong books being the best by far.  The key for me is not to provide description and then a place a character within it.  Instead, I describe everything from the viewpoint of a character so the setting unfolds gradually and organically through the scene.  Not a paragraph early on and that’s it.  I call that the Clancy-Cussler effect and find it lazy and uninspiring.  Here’s an example from my upcoming book featuring Caitlin Strong called Strong at the Break and what I’d you to watch for is how I use a sense of place to increase the tension and suspense:

“’Not long,’ he managed, returning his gaze to what locals referred to simply as the ‘Tackle and Gun,’ a one-story bunker of a building with a flat roof plagued by broken downspouts that left water stains streaked in blotches down its beige exterior.  The gravel parking lot offered only a single shady area courtesy of a grove of Bigtooth Maple trees standing alone against the otherwise sparse land.  But the early afternoon sun had rose high enough to overwhelm them, the truck fast becoming a sauna.

“’That’s what you said, like, an hour ago,’ Caitlin told him, making no effort to hide her displeasure as she continued to sit with her shoulders slumped.

“’But I mean it this time.’

“Caitlin sat up all the way, into the hot swatch of sunlight streaming in through the windshield.  The old truck’s interior always smelled rusty and sour when it heated up, though she wasn’t sure why.  ‘This is some kind of stakeout, ain’t it?’”

“’Isn’t it,’ Jim corrected.

“’Grandpa always said ain’t.’

“’Grandpa never had the benefit of your education, Caitlin.’

“Her father turned toward her and Caitlin noticed the light sheen of perspiration coating his cheeks, a bit thicker along his forehead.  The sun could’ve been to blame, she supposed, except his seat was on the truck’s still shady side.

“’I thought we were going fishing,’ Caitlin said.

“’We are.’

“’Not sitting here in this parking lot.’”

Who are your favorite writers, and do you feel that other writers influenced you in your use of the spirit of place in your novels?

Well, I mentioned James Lee Burke before and he’s the absolute master.  But have you read Lee Child’s masterful Jack Reacher series or anything by the legendary David Morrell?  Morrell once staged one of the best fight scenes ever written inside a room that’s pitch black—the complete absence of setting in which characters are denied sight and must rely on touch and sound instead.  It’s masterful and exceptionally ambitious.  But it’s also organic to the story.  Same thing with Lee Child.  His descriptions of place, inevitably from Reacher’s point of view, are pitch-perfect, so good you’re actually tempted to reread them.  There are plenty of other authors who describe settings in more detail but the descriptions aren’t organic and are often coming from their eyes instead of their characters’ eyes.

Jon, thanks for a great interview and some very insightful tips on the use of scene in fiction.

For more information on Jon Land, visit his homepage.

Since that first novel, Nadel, a former actress, has penned fourteen more in the Inspector Ikmen series (as well as four wonderfully atmospheric World War II novels in a series featuring London undertaker Francis H). Her latest, Deadline, has just been published in England and will appear in the U.S. this summer. Dead of Night, number fourteen in the series was published here last fall. Nadel, winner of the Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger for Deadly Web, also debuted a third series in 2012 with A Private Business, featuring PI Lee Arnold and his assistant, Mumtaz Hakim and set in London during the Olympic Games. London’s Financial Times dubbed that series opener “bleak, brutal and timely,” while the Times  found it a “gutsy tale well-grounded in local colour.”

Barbara, I am so pleased to finally have you on Scene of the Crime. I have been a fan for years.

First, how did you come to write about Istanbul? I can remember being overwhelmed by my first view of Aghia Sophia as a young traveller, but the city is not exactly on everyone’s major tourist itinerary.

I have been visiting the city where my books are set, İstanbul, for thirty years. I went originally as a young tourist, fascinated by the Byzantine past, the backpacker present and most of all by the late Ottoman city of melancholy palaces and sensual, doomed monarchs. I was instantly captivated and have been slavishly returning to İstanbul ever since. I don’t live in the city, but I do visit often, usually twice a year.

What things about Istanbul make it unique and a good physical setting for your books?

İstanbul is labyrinthine. It exists on levels on, above and below the ground which reflect its present, its future and its past. For a crime novelist this means that modern crimes can sometimes be given a twist of something long gone and unfamiliar. In my fifth Inspector Çetin İkmen book Harem, I connect to the Byzantine past via the discovery of a body in the ancient Yerebatan Saray (Sunken Palace or cistern) of the Emperor Justinian. The book is in no way about the Byzantine era, it is modern. But the nature of İstanbul, as a city always connected to its past, makes it possible to bring in elements of times gone by into a contemporary context.

Did you consciously set out to use Istanbul as a “character” in your books, or did this grow naturally out of the initial story or stories?

When I wrote the first İkmen book (Belshazzar’s Daughter) I did so, in part, because I believed that İstanbul had been neglected by crime and mystery novelists for far too long. Before the first İkmen novel came out in 1999, there hadn’t been a huge amount of Istanbul fiction since Eric Ambler back in the 1950s. I did want to redress this but I also wanted to write stories too. I believe, and hope, that the location grows out of the story and the story is complimented by the location. That’s the aim.

How do you incorporate location in your fiction? Do you pay overt attention to it in certain scenes, or is it a background inspiration for you?

İstanbul is always there. It’s in the things my characters see and do, the things they eat and drink and in the uneven and chaotic roads that they travel. At times however, the location takes centre stage. When action is happening somewhere unusual, outré or significant the reader I believe, likes to know more. And so the profile of the background is raised. I may sometimes add some history or even a local legend to the description of the place. This is a conscious move on my part and one which I try to make relevant, exciting and definitely not distracting.

How does your protagonist, Çetin İkmen, interact with his surroundings? Is he a native, a blow-in, a reluctant or enthusiastic inhabitant, cynical about it, a booster? And conversely how does the setting affect your protagonist?

Çetin İkmen is a native Istanbullu, although like a lot of people in the city his ancestors came from elsewhere. In his case his father’s people came from the Anatolian region of Cappadocia while his mother was Albanian. He is an incredibly proud and faithful Istanbullu. He loves the city passionately and he sees the protection of it as very much a sacred duty. But he is realistic too. The traffic choked roads put his blood pressure up and the intense heat and humidity in high summer make him tetchy. İstanbul, like my own native city of London, is not an easy place. It is crowded, loud and fast and as much as it can enthrall, it can also at times frustrate too. İkmen, like me, frequently opts to walk to wherever he wishes to go, not just to get a better view of the sights, but also the avoid the traffic.

Has there been any local reaction to your work?

My books are published in Turkish. They have been so for the last eight years. I’ve had generally good local reaction with great support from Turkish newspapers and periodicals. I’ve given lots of interviews. That said it has to be remembered that Turkish literary criticism is much more polite and less punitive than that in my native UK. That is not a criticism by me of anyone, it’s just a fact.

Of your Istanbul novels, do you have a favorite book or scene that focuses on the place? Could you quote a short passage or give an example of how the location figures in your novels?

I don’t think I actually have a favourite book or scene, as such. But this bit of description from the 8^th İkmen book, A Passion for Killing, is I think a good example.

“After crossing the Galata Bridge, Constable Yıldız steered the car through the steep, narrow streets of Sultanahmet and then down onto the broad Kennedy Caddesi dual carriageway that would take them, ultimately, to the airport. Even in Sergeant Ayşe Farsakoğlu’s short lifetime, this area had changed enormously. Bordering on the Sea of Marmara, districts like Kumpaki and Yedikule had once been poor places where large families with haunted eyes lived in cramped and frequently insanitary accommodation. In more recent years however, this part of the city had been given a considerable face-life and, although the poor had still not disappeared completely, they had moved on. Now many of them lived in high rise blocks out by the airport. Apparently back in the 1970s when the airport had been called Yesilkoy, after the long-since absorbed village of that name, some of the outer suburbs near the airport had been quite chic. Inspector İkmen would talk at length about the beach at the district of Ataköy, which they were now passing, where back in the 1960s he and his young friends had played at emulating Sean Connery’s James Bond. The great Scottish actor had just been in the city at that time making From Russia with Love. Now Ataköy was famous only for its shopping mall, Galleria, with its little internal skating rink.”

Who are your favourite writers and do you feel that other writers influenced you in your use of the spirit of place in your novels?

I have so many favourite writers! But I think that in the context of spirit of place I have to say that my two favourites and probably my greatest influences too are Lawrence Durrell and Charles Dickens. Durrell I think taught me to look at the clear and yet also almost unknowable light of the eastern Mediterranean while Dickens encouraged my love of the left field and the unexpected. I feel that because of Dickens I have permission, as it were, to express the unusual.

Barbara, thanks much for a wonderful and insightful trip to Istanbul.

For more on the author Barbara Nadel, see her group blog, International Crime Authors Reality Check.

Karen, it is a pleasure to have you with us at Scene of the Crime. Could we start off things with a description of your connection to Northumberland, setting of the Lavender novels?

I first went to Northumberland, England’s most northerly county, on a family holiday during the fortnight of the Queens’s Silver Jubilee in 1977.  Even as a child, I absolutely adored the miles of empty beaches, the rugged Farne islands and the windswept fells and moorland.  My parents took us on a tour of Northumberland’s castles and I was overawed at the wealth of history in the area. The castles are totally individual, absolutely magnificent and in my opinion, the best in the England.

When I married and had children of my own, we took frequent family holidays to Northumberland.  We love the county’s open space, its uncongested roads and that vast expanse of ice-blue northern sky which arches overhead. 

What other things about this place make it unique and a good physical setting in your books?

Apart from its remoteness and physical beauty, Northumberland has a turbulent and dramatic history. All those fabulous castles are not there by chance.  They were mediaeval strongholds in times of war.  For centuries Northumberland was a lawless, godless no-man’s land; the border between the two warring nations of Scotland and England. The two opposing armies frequently burnt this area to the ground. 

A tough area breeds tough independent people, whom in turn inspire memorable characters in the mind of an author.  The families who lived there – on both sides of the border – grouped together in clans for protection and survival.   They sought security through their own strength and cunning and set out in large mobs to raid other families.  ‘Reiving’ – raiding for cattle and sheep (and whatever else which could be transported) was the only way to survive and it became an established way of life. The Reivers moved only at night, and took advantage of their intimate knowledge of the remote and rugged terrain, to spirit away their ill-gotten plunder.

Of course, the notion of Scottish Clans is now legendary around the world – mostly thanks to Sir Walter Scott and his ballads.  What is not so well known, perhaps, is that on the English side of the border there were also large, unruly English clans like the Charltons, the Armstrongs, the Milburns, the Robsons, the Fenwicks and the Dodds.  The Charltons of the North Tyne Valley were one of the largest of these families of thieves and cattle rustlers; they are my husband’s direct ancestors.

Eventually, Scotland and England united under King James I.  Things gradually settled down in Northumberland and peace returned, but an element of lawlessness remained – even in the early nineteenth century, which is the historical era for both my novels.  The legacy of the Border Reivers is still vivid in the mind of the local inhabitants and the notion of clan and family loyalty is a theme I’ve exploited in my first novel, Catching the Eagle.

Did you consciously set out to use your location as a “character” in your books, or did this grow naturally out of the initial story or stories?

Northumberland chose me.  In 2005 my husband and I made a fantastic discovery.  While researching his family history, we found a jail-bird roosting in the branches of his ancestral tree. We discovered that Jamie Charlton, my husband’s four times great-grandfather, had been tried and convicted of an audacious burglary in Northumberland back in 1810.  Originally sentenced to death, Jamie’s punishment had later been commuted to transportation to New South Wales in Australia.  His conviction was controversial – even by the dodgy standards of Regency justice.

The perfect plot for an historical novel had just landed in my lap, with the location pre-determined. Catching the Eagle was the result of many long years of research into this true story.

I was delighted to return to Northumberland for the setting of my second novel, The Missing Heiress.  This is the first book in a new series:  The Detective Lavender Mysteries.  I quickly realised that the remoteness of the region would the perfect backdrop for the dysfunctional Carnaby family who need to keep grim secrets hidden. I gave them a fictional pele tower with three foot thick stone walls to hide behind. 

How do you incorporate location in your fiction? Do you pay overt attention to it in certain scenes, or is it a background inspiration for you?

Crime fiction is essentially plot driven, but I made a deliberate decision to incorporate plenty of landscape description into The Missing Heiress.  I wanted the brooding wintery background of that remote rural location to become a memorable feature of the novel.

We went on a wonderful research trip back to the area in the summer of 2011.  Armed with my notebook, I jotted down everything I saw and heard from the inverted reflection of an ancient Roman bridge in the still, peat-black mirrored surface of the river, to the towering willow weed which lined its banks and the ancient, creaking timber of Hareshaw Woods.  We also visited every public house in Bellingham in order decide which one would be the most realistic location for a Regency coaching inn.  Research can be tough.

How does Lavender  interact with his surroundings?

Born and bred in London, my educated detective, Stephen Lavender, is widely travelled and is confident anywhere. His broad knowledge of British wild plants proved invaluable in the solving the mystery of The Missing Heiress.

However, his assistant, Constable Woods, is more at home in the crime-ridden and festering maze of the London slums where a cut-throat lurked around every corner. He is uncomfortable and lost in this alien and slightly menacing rural landscape: 

‘Woods started at every noise, his eyes flicked sharply from one side to another every time a branch creaked and strained in the wind, his hand hovered instinctively over the pistol in his pocket….The man was spooked by trees.’

Has there been any local reaction to your works?

Yes, Catching the Eagle was favourably reviewed by the magazine section of Newcastle’s main newspaper:

‘It is a rollicking tale full of adultery, drinking, fighting, and gambling.
Rich imagery, suspense and some genuinely likeable characters –as well as plenty of murky ones – make this an enjoyable read. Karen is particularly strong at capturing the Geordie dialect and recreating the rural Northumbrian world of the 1800s, where the wealthy lived in comfort and the poor struggled to make ends meet.’
Laura Fraine, Culture Magazine, The Journal (Newcastle)

It means a lot to me that the Northumbrian’s feel that I’ve successfully recreated their world in Regency times.

Have you ever made any goofs in depicting your location or time period? Please share–the more humorous the better (we all have).

Oh, yes. There’s a classic mistake in The Missing Heiress which will keep the inhabitants of Bellingham smiling for some time to come. I set several scenes in the graveyard of their Anglo-Saxon church.  I used

Bellingham, Northumberland

a map to confirm that St. Cuthbert’s stood next to the North Tyne River, but completely forgot to check out the contours around the church.  In reality, the church is situated on the top of a steeply wooded hill beside the meandering river but in the novel I have accidently lowered it a couple of hundred feet onto marshy, flat land by the river bank.  Ooops.

 Of the two novels you have written set in Northumberland, do you have a favorite book or scene that focuses on the place? Could you quote a short passage or give an example of how the location figures in your novels?

The stunning beauty of Bellingham’s Hareshaw Woods and the magnificent waterfall, Hareshaw Linn, is a relatively new discovery for us.  It left a strong impression and is now a significant part of the setting and action in The Missing Heiress. However, I’ve only ever seen Hareshaw Linn on a gloriously warm summer’s day and I had delve deep into my imagination to create a more sinister picture of the waterfall on a cold, grey November afternoon.

‘They reached the black rocks at the base of the waterfall.  Thick icicles hung like knives from the trees and the sides of the gorge. The waterfall had frozen over at its sides and so had the edge of the pool.  A crescent of glittering ice spread out beneath their feet, enticing them to their doom.  In sharp contrast to the whiteness of the crystallized water at the edge, ribbons of black swirled around the jagged rocks which rose like tombstones from the centre of the pool.

‘Anna shivered again.  This was a place of death.  Only last summer, some poor lass had thrown herself and her unborn bairn from the top of the waterfall onto the rocks below.  Her broken and disfigured body had floated limply in the pool for days before it was found tangled in the reeds.

‘The path up to the top of the waterfall rose steeply; the slimy stone steps were treacherous beneath their boots.  Gnarled roots reached out to trip them and patches of scree sent them slithering back down the hill.  The spray from the waterfall caught on the drooping boughs of menacing trees and dripped down upon their heads.   They sucked in the pungent smell of rotting vegetation with every breath.’

Who are your favorite writers, and do you feel that other writers influenced you in your use of the spirit of place in your novels?

For me, Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens are the writers who created the greatest sense of place in their novels.  Many scenes from the grimy, smog-filled and crowded streets of Dickens’ London and the gentle rolling hills and vales of Hardy’s fictional Wessex still linger in my memory.  Both have influenced my writing.

What’s next for Lavender?

Detective Lavender is now back at Bow Street in London after the successful conclusion of the case of The Missing Heiress, and poor Jamie Charlton from the Catching the Eagle has been sent for transportation to New South Wales.  However, I do envisage that both of these protagonists will return to Northumberland in future novels.

Thanks much for talking with us at Scene of the Crime, Karen.

For more information about Karen’s work visit her Home Page.

Reviewing the fourth book in the series, A Case of Two Cities, Publishers Weekly felt that Xiaolong  “captures an honest detective’s struggle to be true to his professional ideals under a repressive regime.” The same reviewer concluded: “Chen stands in a class with Martin Cruz Smith’s Russian investigator, Arkady Renko, and P.D. James’s Scotland Yard inspector, Adam Dalgliesh.”

Xiaolong, it is a pleasure to have you with us on Scene of the Crime. Would you begin by describing your connection to Shanghai?.

I was born and brought up in Shanghai, where I studied and worked before I left for the United States in 1988. Now I live in the States, but I still go back to Shanghai quite frequently.

What things about Shanghai make it unique and a good physical setting in your books?

Shanghai is one of the Chinese cities that opened early to the West, with foreign concessions that mixed with other local areas for Shanghainese. In the twenties and thirties, Shanghai was called “the oriental Paris.” To some extent, you may say the city boasts of a combined culture of the east and west, like nowhere else in China. Inspector Chen, the main character, happens to be one who has come under the influence of both the traditional Chinese culture and modern western culture. So he fits into the unique setting.

Did you consciously set out to use Shanghai as a “character” in your books, or did this grow naturally out of the initial story or stories?

Not at first. But in China, a lot of things are understandable only in the light of the cultural and political background, which cannot but turn into a character for the books.

How do you incorporate location in your fiction? Do you pay overt attention to it in certain scenes, or is it a background inspiration for you?

For me, it is natural to choose Shanghai as the location for my stories. A city I am most familiar with, and it is easy for me to come up with details. All the same, it’s no longer a city where I live, so it sort of gives me a perspective of distance. When some scenes are reexamined, they can be inspirational, imbued with new meanings.

How does Inspector Chen interact with his surroundings? Is he a native, a blow-in, a reluctant or enthusiastic inhabitant, cynical about it, a booster?

Inspector Chen is a native of Shanghai. He has always lived in the city, but at the same time, it is a fast-changing city, and he is bothered by things happening there in spite his feeling for the city. With the ever-growing gap between the rich and the poor, the contrast of the new skyscrapers and old slums, his feelings for the city are mixed. It’s not just a matter of being passionate or cynical.

Has there been any local reaction to your works?

The first three books of the Inspector Chen series have been translated into Chinese. But due to the censorship there, Shanghai is “shanghaied” in the Chinese translation. According to my Chinese editor, some official read the translation and said, “The story cannot have happened in Shanghai.” As a result, Shanghai is changed into “H city” (H in English), all the names of the streets and restaurants are also changed, lest that people could still recognize as a story of Shanghai. Ironically, the book reviews still describe the books as the stories of Shanghai. Maybe the censorship officials are too busy to read the reviews.

Of your Inspector Chen novels, do you have a favorite book or scene that focuses on the setting? Could you quote a short passage or give an example of how the location figures in your novels?

One of my favorite locations in the city of Shanghai is the Bund. A Loyal Character Dancer begins with a scene of the Bund. Read the first few pages of the book.

Who are your favorite writers, and do you feel that other writers influenced you in your use of the spirit of place in your novels?

The two Swedish writers, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, are my favorite authors in the mystery genre, but as for poetry, it is always T. S. Eliot.

What’s next for Chen?

Ironically, the location in the next book, Don’t Cry, Tai Lake, is Wuxi, where Inspector Chen is having his vacation. His partner Detective Yu remains in Shanghai, helping Chen investigate there. So at least part of the story still unfolds in Shanghai. (Note: The eighth book in the series, Enigma of China, is due out in May, 2013).

Thanks again, Xiaolong, for taking the time to talk with us on Scene of the Crime.

For more information on Qiu Xiaolong, see his author homepage.

I am absolutely delighted to introduce my readers to eclectic, prolific writer Allen Appel. I guess we have known each other for more than ten years now, but have never met face to face. One of those writer-buddy relationships in which propinquity plays no part. I have interviewed Allen a couple of times, we have read each others’ works in manuscript and offered suggestions, and we even survived a couple of attempts at collaboration.

I don’t doubt that many of you already know Allen’s work: he is best known for his time-travel series of thrillers featuring Alex Balfour, a history professor who is tossed about in time through the course of five books of the series. Time after Time initiates the series, and we find Alex back in the Russian revolution. Publishers Weekly, felt that readers ready to withhold incredulity “will be rewarded by scenes of cliff-hanging and head-bashing, slaughter, torture and hairsbreadth escapes, . . . true romance and wholesome sex.” New York Times Book Review dubbed this series opener “fine entertainment.”

The next book, Twice upon a Time, takes Alex and readers to the American West. Kirkus Reviews termed the novel a “high-speed, deftly handled sequel” which blends “time-travel, authentic backgrounds, and speculative fancy.” Book three, Till the End of Time, finds Balfour transported back to World War II attempting to stop the Japanese from developing their own atomic bomb. Publishers Weekly once again had praise for Appel’s fiction, calling this series installment a “thoroughly absorbing and enjoyable adventure.” The fourth book in the series, The Sea of Time, sets Alex aboard the Titanic in a novel that went unpublished for a couple of decades. Fifth in the series, In Time of War, sees Alex traveling back to the Civil War era in the U.S. “Those in search of exuberant Civil War-flavored entertainment will find much to enjoy here,” noted Publishers Weekly. Similarly, Booklist declared of this title: “Appel has adeptly combined science fiction and history into another compelling adventure that stretches back and forth through time at a breathless pace.”

Allen is in the process now of re-issuing all these titles as e-books at a very affordable price. If you have not yet read his series, now is the perfect time to start! All available at Amazon Kindle.

Allen, it is great to have you on Scene of the Crime. You know the drill–let’s start with a description of your specific locale in time and space.

Each book in the series takes place in a different locale. My interest is the past rather than a place. My character, Alex Balfour, who can travel through time, can’t influence where he goes so I send him to a period I want to research and write about. In the first book he goes back to Russia, circa 1917, because the publisher of the book was interested in the place and period. I did some research and agreed.

Why time travel?

The past, at least to me, is endlessly fascinating, so it doesn’t matter so much where I go as when I go. The five novels took place during the Russian Revolution, Custer’s Last Stand, WWII, the Titanic and the Civil War.

Did you consciously set out to use your location as a “character” in your books, or did this grow naturally out of the initial story or stories?

The past is as much a character as any of the folks who people the pages of my books. I hope the reader is as happy reading and immersing himself in a specific period as I am writing about it.

How do you incorporate location in your fiction?

I’m completely conscious of the time period as I write. The way characters talk, what they see, how they think, it’s all tied to the period they live in.

How does Alex Balfour interact with his surroundings?

Being able to travel through time is the curse and blessing of my character’s life. Since he can’t control it, he is always aware that he might be going into the past or coming back into the present at any time. And while this frustrates and at times terrorizes him, he also is exhilarated by the experience.

Has there been any local reaction to your works? What do local (ie those who actually live in your novels’ setting) reviewers think, for example?

The way I write these books is to research and gather all the material I can about a period, particularly photographs. In the first book I would sit in the Library of Congress and leaf through picture books of the period. When I would come across a particularly compelling photo, I would take notes on it and later write a scene putting my characters into the picture. This worked well, except all the pictures were in black and white, which drove me nuts. Sure the sky was blue and the grass was green, but what color were the houses? among many other things. So I would write a description, get to the color of the house and just say, to hell with it, the house is yellow. After the book was published I was at a party and there was an old Russian man there who had read the book and liked it. Were there any mistakes, I asked? No, it was fine, he said. Were there any yellow houses there in Russia in those days, I asked, trembling. Oh, yes, he said, there were many yellow houses. Whew.

Have you ever made any goofs in depicting your location or time period? Please share–the more humorous the better (we all have).

I made a mistake in my first book, Time After Time, which still makes me shudder every time I think about it. I have never told anyone what it is, and, thank God, no one has ever caught it, maybe because it is so glaringly obvious. I will go to my grave with that dark secret.

Of the novels you have written set in this location, do you have a favorite book or scene that focuses on the place? Could you quote a short passage or give an example of how the location figures in your novels?

Readers often say this scene is one of their favorites… 1917. Alex is back in the past in Russia. He has no money, no way to live, so he goes to a pawnshop and pawns his father’s pocket watch. The pawnbroker asks him if he has anything else, and Alex realizes he has his trusty Swiss army knife with him.

 …Alex pulled the knife from his pocket and held it out. “Genuine Swiss army knife,” he said, wondering if there even was a Swiss army in 1917. He let the question pass as he felt himself gripped by the goofy scene he was now playing. “Absolutely genuine; I doubt if there is another in all of Russia.” A stab in the dark, but probably very true nonetheless.

The pawnbroker took the knife and turned it in his hand. He looked up at Alex and then back at the knife. Alex took the knife and opened one of the blades, then another. He paused for effect, then opened up the tiny scissors, waited, and with a small flourish, pulled out the ivory toothpick secreted in the handle. The pawnbroker’s eyes widened as he took back the knife.

“Faberge?” he asked, watching Alex closely and at the same time staring at the wonder in his hand.

“L.L. Bean,” Alex said mysteriously. The pawnbroker nodded solemnly.

“Five hundred,” the pawnbroker said. “And call me Levinovitch. “

Who are your favorite writers, and do you feel that other writers influenced you in your use of the spirit of place in your novels?

I grew up reading everything. My mother simply handed me whatever book she had just finished and I would read it. James Michener, anything that was big and fat we devoured. I still love big fat novels. Let me say, though, before you ask, because everyone always does, that Jack Finney is not one of my favorite writers nor was he an influence. Many people think I am the author of his much beloved time travel book, From Time to Time. Now that we have that out of the way, I would say that the best time travel book ever written is Replay, by Ken Grimwood, who tragically died before completing a promised sequel.

If you could live anywhere, where would it be and why?

Paris in the thirties. The artists were fascinating. I want to sit in a bar and have a drink with Kiki, the whore of Montparnasse.

What’s next for Alex Balfour?

I’m glad you asked. Nothing, unless lots of people go to http://theappelstore.com and buy the existing five books in the series. That must be the most shameless piece of self-promotion ever on Scene of the Crime. The publisher has declined to put out any more of the series because it never reached bestseller status. I’d love to continue the books, but I can’t unless I come up with enough money to tide me over while I write. So to hell with the publisher, we can do this on our own. Here’s the scene, envision it… the evil publisher has poisoned my lead character, Alex Balfour, and he lies dying…

Peter, rising from where Tinker Bell lies dying: “She says—she says she thinks she could get well again if children believed in fairies. Do you believe in fairies? Say quick that you believe! If you believe, clap your hands!”

OK, America, don’t let Alex die. Clap your hands, and say you believe. And buy a few books. Thanks.

Thanks again, Allen for joining us at Scene of the Crime.

For more information, go to Allen’s home page. Also visit his blog, The Thriller Guy for smart discussions of thrillers.

Kerr’s Gunther novels are often set in Berlin shortly before, during, and after World War II. Bernie Gunther is an ex-police officer turned private investigator. The first three in the series, March Violets, The Pale Criminal, and A German Requiem, were published between 1989 and 1991, and later gathered in the omnibus volume, Berlin Noir. Kerr busied himself with other novels for fifteen years before returning to the Bernie Gunther books in 2006 with The One from the Other, followed by A Quiet Flame, If the Dead Rise Not, Field Gray, and Prague Fatale. Typical of the critical praise the series has garnered is a Publishers Weekly notice commenting that Kerr “smoothly integrates a noir crime plot with an authentic historical background.” Patrick Anderson, writing in the Washington Post on Field Gray, noted, ” Kerr resurrects the past to remind us that the fascist mentality endures, all over the world, even though swastikas and jackboots are no longer its outward trappings.” Kirkus Reviews had praise for the 2012 series installment, Prague Fatale: “Bernie’s voice—ironic, mordantly funny, inimitable—reflects a world-weary journey. Still—and this is the entertaining heart of the matter—readers are never permitted to forget that survival is his religion.”

First, could you describe your connection to Berlin? How did you come to live there or become interested in it?

I’ve been interested in Berlin ever since I was a student, when I studied German jurisprudence and philosophy as a post-graduate. I got interested in the phenomenon of Nazism from a philosophical POV. I’ve been making visits there since 1988 when it was more exciting and very Le Carre because of the wall. Visiting the east and dodging the Stasi was always quite a thrill. And of course the state of Berlin even in 1988 was a living link with the fall of Berlin. The place was still a ruin and it was possible easily to imagine that the Red Army had just left. Berlin is so different today. I often stay at the Adlon which has a fine view of the Brandenburg Gate and it still seems hard to imagine that the whole area was one large mine field.

What things about Berlin make it unique and a good physical setting in your books?

Berlin and St Petersburg are the two pivotal cities for the whole of twentieth century history. The Bolshevik Revolution gives birth to the Nazi one. This period is the most important event in history since the Reformation. And then we have the Cold War which again puts Berlin at the centre of everything. On all sorts of levels – political, moral, philosophical – Berlin fascinates me.

Did you consciously set out to use Berlin as a “character” in your books, or did this grow naturally out of the initial story or stories?

Yes, I tried to make Berlin a character in the same way that Los Angeles is a character in Chandler, which is probably where people get the idea that I copied Chandler. I do admire his descriptions of places and have always used them as an example of excellence that I set myself. It seems to me that a sense of place is essential in all good fiction. I like to think of myself as being rather similar to a painter in that I describe pictures of places.

How do you incorporate location in your fiction? Do you pay overt attention to it in certain scenes, or is it a background inspiration for you?

Of course. You have to …. In physics Heisenberg talks about the observer effect which refers to changes that the act of observation make on the phenomenon being observed. This is the same with writing. The process of imagining a set of characters in a piece of fiction inevitably changes how they behave and react; and yet that too is affected by the period in which I too exist. I hope to make scenes seem more authentically ‘thirties’ by the use of small and seemingly trivial details (like a pointillist in painting adding small spots of colour); this works too, however one has to be aware that these details only mean something by virtue of the fact that I am writing about this period from a POV that is set in the present.

How does Bernie Gunther  interact with his  surroundings?

I try to study the Berlin character. I avoid obvious heroism. … I find it impossible to imagine the setting of Nazi Germany not affecting anyone.

Has there been any local reaction to your works? What do German reviewers think?

My books are published in more than forty different languages. Including German. The last time I was in Berlin I saw my books displayed in tourist shops (not bookshops) alongside Le Carre and Isherwood. That was quite a little moment for me. I think that’s a reaction from locals that speaks for itself.

Who are your favorite writers, and do you feel that other writers influenced you in your use of the spirit of place in your novels?

Well, I’m very fond of several writers but I don’t feel influenced by anyone really. I don’t read many novels; to be honest I don’t read much at all, not in the way of entertainment, not the way I used to. Most of what I read is research, for what I’m writing. It seems to me that a novel demands so much from its author that it becomes hard to remove one’s mind from that and put it in someone else’s imagination. Reading for pleasure is like a holiday for me and I don’t take enough holidays.

Thanks much, Philip, for taking the time to talk with us at Scene of the Crime.

For more information on the author, visit his home page  or at the series site.

The second in the series, The Janus Stone, once again finds Ruth on the trail of murder and mayhem in the past in a novel about which the London Independent observed: “The setting is enticingly atmospheric. I closed the book wanting to know more… as well as feeling the satisfaction that a really intelligent murder story can give.” Third in the series, The House at Seas End, just out in England, has Ruth investigating deaths from World War II. The Independent felt that Griffiths “conjures the bleak north Norfolk coast, using its coastal erosion as a metaphor for the decay of human sympathy.” The Guardian found the entire series “gripping,” further commenting that book three “is just as enthralling as its predecessors.”

Book three and four have also now appeared in the U.S. In The House at Sea’s End, Ruth is just returning to work after giving birth to a daughter and is investigating a very cold case. This involves skeletons from the past–six of them with hands bound and bullet wounds to the head. Local policeman DCI Nelson is called in on the case, which complicates matters for Ruth, as the married detective is the father of her child. But the two manage to carry on the investigation that leads to an atrocity from World War II. A Kirkus Reviews contributor felt this novel “offers not only an excellent mystery but a continuing exploration of the lives of complex, sometimes unlovable characters.” Similarly, Booklist dubbed it “another winner from the talented Griffiths.”

Book four in the series, A Room Full of Bones, finds Ruth and Nelson again teaming up to solve a pair of murders at a local museum. Booklist found this a “thoroughly involving mystery,” while the Guardian termed it a “welcome addition to a great series.”

Elly, it’s great to have you on Scene of the Crime. Your work has been commended not only for the characterization–Ruth is a wonderful character–but also for its evocation of place. Let’s start with a discussion of your connection to the setting for the Ruth Galloway books.

My books are set in Norfolk. I don’t live there but, when I was a child, we always used to go on to Norfolk on holiday, staying with my aunt who had a boat on the Norfolk Broads. I have lots of memories of drifting through the beautiful eerie landscape while my aunt told stories about ghost and water spirits….

What things about Norfolk make it unique and a good physical setting in your books?

Ruth, my heroine, is an archaeologist and so, for me, one of the wonderful things about Norfolk is the wealth of archaeology and history. This land has been inhabited many times – from Bronze and Iron Age settlements to the Roman invasion and more recent, but still fascinating, history. My first book The Crossing Places started with Iron Age remains, the second The Janus Stone involved a Roman excavation and the third The House At Seas End is about bodies dating from the Second World War. It’s all there!

Did you consciously set out to use Norfolk as a “character” in your books, or did this grow naturally out of the initial story or stories?

Well, for me, the setting came first. I was walking across Titchwell Marsh with my husband, an archaeologist, when he remarked that prehistoric man saw marshland as sacred – because it was neither land nor sea, but something in-between, they saw it as a kind of bridge to the afterlife. The entire plot of The Crossing Places came to me in that second.

How do you incorporate location in your fiction? Do you pay overt attention to it in certain scenes, or is it a background inspiration for you?

Because Ruth is an archaeologist, digging down through layers of history, the landscape is a constant presence. Not only are bodies excavated from the ground but the land itself yields clues – the shape and colour of the grass, a ring of stones, a yew tree growing in a graveyard…

How does Ruth interact with her surroundings? Is she a native, a blow-in, a reluctant or enthusiastic inhabitant, cynical about it, a booster? And conversely, how does the setting affect Ruth?

Ruth is from South London (where I lived for many years) and, like me, she has no idea why she is so drawn to lonely coastal landscapes. The other main character, Detective Inspector Harry Nelson, is from Blackpool and he loathes everything about Norfolk.

Has there been any local reaction to your works?

So far the books have been very well received in Norfolk. I hope that my love for the area comes across in the books.

Have you ever made any goofs in depicting your location or time period? Please share–the more humorous the better (we all have).

It seems to rain a lot in my books and someone told me that, statistically, Norfolk is quite dry. All I can say is – it always rains when I’m on holiday there.

Of the Ruth Galloway novels, do you have a favorite book or scene that focuses on the place? Could you quote a short passage or give an example of how the location figures in your novels?

I feel awkward quoting my own work, but I do like the first description of the Saltmarsh, the isolated coastline where Ruth lives.

“Everything is pale and washed out, grey-green merging to grey-white as the marsh meets sky. Far off is the sea, a line of darker grey, seagulls riding in on the waves. It is utterly desolate and Ruth has absolutely no idea why she loves it so much.”

Who are your favorite writers, and do you feel that other writers influenced you in your use of the spirit of place in your novels?

My favourite author of all times is Wilkie Collins. I love the way he can imbue a place with a sense of menace, for example the Shivering Sands in The Moonstone. I’m sure it has influenced me.

Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with us at Scene of the Crime, Elly.

For more information about Elly Griffiths, visit her homepage.