‘Criminal Geography’

June 16, 2024 at 9:30 pm (books, Mystery fiction)

So: Imagine my surprise upon encountering the above phrase recently in “Crack the City Wide Open,” a piece featured in the May 11-12 issue of the Wall Street Journal. Author Tom Downey states that “…Guidebooks send you to museums, hotels and restaurants with menus in English, but detective novels get at the heart of a city, allowing you to feel its pulse, to understand where its people come from and how they spend their time.” He adds: “Much of a place can be revealed by its underbelly.”

Downey borrows the title phrase from writer and lawyer Gianrico Carofiglio. I’ve long been familiar with this author. His crime fiction is set primarily in Bari, a region in the south of Italy. Downey praises the way in which Carofiglio brings the region to vivid life. That is one of the things I most appreciated about his novels. I’ve written posts on two of them: Temporary Perfections and The Silence of the Wave.

A search conducted on Gianrico Carofiglio reveals that he has not published anything – in English, anyway – since 2016.

I’ve been to Italy – I’d go back tomorrow if I could! – but I’ve never been to Brazil. That country is the setting for the crime fiction of Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza. I agree with Downey about this author also. He does a fine job of bringing this fascinating region to life for the reader. In this space, I’ve reviewed two titles by Garcia-Roza: Blackout and Alone in a Crowd. I remember finding the latter especially memorable.

From what I am able to ascertain, Garcia-Roza’s last work in English was published in 2007. He passed away in 2020.

Gianrico Carofiglio

Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

There are numerous other authors of crime fiction for whom the setting is essential to their work. A few that I can recommend right off the bat are Donna Leon (Venice), Jane Harper (Australia), and Alexander McCall Smith (Botswana).

There are, of course, plenty of mysteries set here in the U.S. They aren’t all in California, although that’s the preferred setting for many of the early masterpieces. Think Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross MacDonald.

In 1970, Tony Hillerman published Dance Hall of the Dead. It was the first in a series of novels set in the Navajo Country of the Desert Southwest. These books attained great popularity among crime fiction aficionados such as Yours Truly. I was so taken with Hillerman’s work that my husband and I traveled to New Mexico to get a sense of what was so special about he place.

Everything was special about it. It was as different from my East Coast home as a place could possibly be. We went in February. It snowed; the snow was like cotton candy. By afternoon the sun was shining. We drove from Albuquerque to Santa Fe to Taos.

Land of Enchantment indeed.

We lost Tony Hillerman in 2008. His daughter Anne Hillerman has continued the series, enlarging the culturing context while continuing to foreground her father’s vivid characters and compelling storytelling. What luck!