{"id":3626,"date":"2014-08-05T19:18:03","date_gmt":"2014-08-05T23:18:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3626"},"modified":"2015-01-03T06:11:31","modified_gmt":"2015-01-03T11:11:31","slug":"faraway-places","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3626","title":{"rendered":"Faraway Places"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"York,<\/a>

(photo: author)<\/p><\/div>\n

No doubt about it, setting a mystery in a faraway locale adds a touch of romance. Fans of the Venice-based detective stories of Donna Leon<\/a>, Edinburgh\u2019s Inspector Rebus series by Ian Rankin<\/a>, or Tarquin Hall<\/a>\u2019s Delhi-based private eye stories, see their cities<\/a> as practically another character. But these authors live or have lived in the places they write about. Can authors pull that off from afar? A panel of American mystery writers at last weekend\u2019s Deadly Ink conference discussed where, why\u2014and most important, how\u2014they do it. This is of intense interest to me, because my mystery series character, Eugenia Clarke, is a travel writer, and stories about her take place where she\u2019s on assignment\u2014Alaska, Morocco, Rome.<\/p>\n

For the most part, Annamaria Alfieri<\/a> (writing about South America and colonial East Africa), Albert Tucher<\/a> (beginning a series about Hawai`i\u2014a great excuse for a tax-deductible research trip, he said), and Cathi Stoler<\/a> (Tuscany and that foreign country, Las Vegas) have spent time in the places they write about, supplementing their own experiences with research. They talked about how the challenge is far greater than pasting on a few superficial references. Street names, landmarks.<\/p>\n

When they\u2019re really cooking, their research\u2014on the ground, through interviews, background reading, online\u2014will lead to a plot and characters uniquely of that place. They\u2019ll end up with a story that could not have happened in Columbus, Ohio. Readers recognize that legitimate sense of place. For example, an estimated 500 English-language books\u2014mostly mystery or suspense\u2014are set in Italy, and this website<\/a> rates them as to whether they really capture \u201cthe essence” or merely use Italy as a lure.<\/p>\n

On the Murder is Everywhere<\/a> blog, which features a group of far-flug writers, Alfieri recently quoted from John Fowles\u2019s The French Lieutenant\u2019s Woman<\/em>, in which he describes the fundamental reason writers write: \u201cWe wish to create worlds as real as, but other than the world that is.\u201d Setting a story in a far-off place puts the writer\u2019s head\u2014every bit as much as the reader\u2019s\u2014in a place where that can happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No doubt about it, setting a mystery in a faraway locale adds a touch of romance. Fans of the Venice-based detective stories of Donna Leon, Edinburgh\u2019s Inspector Rebus series by Ian Rankin, or Tarquin Hall\u2019s Delhi-based private eye stories, see … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Faraway Places","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[62,40,104,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-fiction","category-the-morgue","category-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-Wu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3626"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3628,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3626\/revisions\/3628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}