Hello, I curious if there have been any hard-boiled
(or for that matter, any detective or mystery) writers who
use a rural setting. Most authors focus on urban areas (e.g.,
Chander and MacDonald, Los Angeles; Ignacio Taibo, Mexico
City; Arjouni, Frankfurt, etc.). The New York Times recently
ran an article about mystery authors who use suburban
settings ("Murder Most Suburban," Marilyn Stasio, 4 Feb. 07;
see: http://www.donswaim.com/nytimes.murder.suburban.html).
However, I cannot think of authors who use rural settings.
Some authors like Chandler have scenes set in rural areas
(although I suspect that most of them are now part of the
urban sprawl of Orange County); Hammett tends to use a foray
out of the city as a diversion (such as in the Maltese
Falcon).
The only exceptions that I can think of are John M. Cain's
The Postman Always Rings Twice and most of the work of Tony
Hillerman (which I would not classify as hard-boiled; I am
aware that there a discussion about this in 1999 on this
list). Admittedly these are big exceptions, but are there
other rural authors?
Thanks,
Jacob Zumoff
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