One of crime fiction’s most notable detectives is back and his return is cause for readers to celebrate. “The Burning Room” marks Michael Connelly’s 19th, and although Connelly no longer lives full time in L.A., detective Harry Bosch still does.
“The Burning Room,” like the other Bosch books and countless other crime novels, is set in Los Angeles. Which begs the question: Why is Southern California so often the scene of the crime novel? What is it about Los Angeles that screams bloody murder?
Since the days of Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald, Los Angeles has featured prominently in crime fiction. Bestselling authors like Jonathan Kellerman, Faye Kellerman, Walter Mosley and Robert Crais have all set their stories of murder and mayhem in the City of Angels, and surrounding SoCal.
James Ellroy, the “Demon Dog of American crime fiction,” sets his novels exclusively in Los Angeles, most notably “L.A. Confidential” and “The Black Dahlia.” Ellroy has said that being born and raised in film-noir era L.A — and his mother’s unsolved murder here — inspires his work and his choice of settings.
Bestselling author T. Jefferson Parker has published 20 crime novels set in SoCal. Parker asserts that “… California attracts dreamers and schemers — people who are escaping, exploring, seeking, running. You get the sense of dreams being hatched and options running out simultaneously.” He suggests that there are characters and stories to draw from everywhere you look.
Writer and editor Denise Hamilton, in the introduction to her wonderful crime fiction anthology “Los Angeles Noir,” has her own poetic take: “Maybe it’s the seductive blur of artifice and reality, the possibility of shucking off the past like last year’s frock and reinventing yourself beyond your wildest dreams. Maybe it’s the desperation that descends when the dream goes sour, the duplicity that lurks behind the beauty …”
My take is more practical. Southern California has a lot to offer a crime writer: a vast and varied landscape to use as backdrops — ocean, mountains, desert; a famous police department and thousands of unsolved cases to draw inspiration from; a fascinating city known for its shiny artifice, as well as its shady underbelly.
In the end, maybe the reason crime fiction dwells in Southern California is the same reason so many of us live here: the weather. A sunny day offering a compelling contrast to the dark side of humanity.
Allison Hill is the President and CEO of Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena and Book Soup in West Hollywood, and a frequent contributor to The Huffington Post book section. You can reach Hill at www.AllisonKHill.com or readingalovestory.tumblr.com.
