Location, location, location is the mantra of all real estate agents across the country. As a resident of San Diego, I can testify to the validity of that phrase. But location is also important in the world of mystery novels. Location permeates the storyline and the characters who live there. Where else could Jack Nicholson’s character be in the noir mystery, Chinatown, other than 1930s Los Angeles? Sherlock Holmes is the great-great grandfather of the main character in my books. Can anyone visualize Sherlock, in his deerstalker hat, strolling around anywhere but the foggy streets of London?
Many mystery authors create their own fictional locations and I can’t blame them. Setting your own story along Main Street in the fictional town of Podunk is the mainstay of most cozy mysteries. Good examples are Angela Lansbury solving weekly murder mysteries in fictional Cabot Cove, Maine in Murder, She Wrote or Chief Inspector Barnaby doing the same in fictional Midsomer, England in Midsomer Murders. The bodies pile up, week after week, to the point where these idyllic communities obviously have the highest murder rates in the world. But none of that matters to the viewers (or readers) of cozy mysteries because the bucolic, unchanging fictional location is the accepted rule for that genre.
By making up your own fictional town as the location of the mystery, the author need not worry about street names, iconic landmarks, famous restaurants. They are all made up. However, no such leniency exists for contemporary novels located in real cities in the present. Readers of such novels are expecting accuracy, and rightly so. If your location is Astoria, Queens in New York City, you damn well better know what the subway lines are in the area.
For that reason, I started my first Theo Holmes novel, Black Velvet, in San Diego, where I’ve resided for many years. Because of my familiarity with the city, I made it the ‘home town’ of all of my primary protagonists. Nonetheless, research is essential and it may actually entail visiting the locale being referenced in the book, e.g., the Hotel del Coronado.
Even if locales are correctly described, time moves on and locations can change or go away. One of Holmes favorite pubs mentioned in Black Velvet, has since closed after the book’s publication. I’m certain that several other locales will also change names or disappear in the years ahead but that is to be expected. The other changes that may occur are to the cultural or societal environment. I sincerely hope that the homeless encampments described in Black Velvet are no longer there in the years ahead.
The obvious problems and peril with accuracy and the need for detailed research make contemporary novels in real locations more difficult to write. However, the payoff is that real locations enhance the credibility and grounding of the plot, its characters and the societal issues we all confront in today’s world. For readers, it provides them the opportunity to make a virtual visit to a great city that may be on their bucket list. Can’t do that with Cabot Cove, Maine.
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