Man or Bear or Setting? by Jenn McKinlay

 JENN McKINLAY: Recently, my Instagram feed was full of the debate of man vs bear. For those of you who missed it, let me sum up. The question was if a woman was alone in the woods would she rather come across a strange man or a bear, meaning would she feel safer with a strange man or a bear? 

Pic from the CBC article: How the 'man vs. bear' trend exposes troubling issues (Hint: It's not about the bear)

As you can imagine there were many many many opinions, some very strong, about this topic but that’s not why I’m writing this post. 

Pic from Life Hacker Australia article: The Man or Bear Question: Why It’s Capturing the Internet’s Attention Right Now

I’m writing it because I posed the question to several of my female friends and every single one of them said they’d choose the strange man, which blew my mind because I’d choose the bear. Deeper analysis leads me to believe our different choices come from the quality of the adult male role models in our formative years, but that, too, is a post for another day.

CNN: Man or bear? A viral question has spawned scary responses

Now when I flipped the question and asked, “Okay, you walk downstairs to your kitchen for breakfast and there’s a strange man seated at the counter or a bear foraging in your refrigerator, which do you choose?” They all said bear. Which made me realize that this entire conversation speaks to the importance of setting!

A few books/series where I believe the setting is as important as the main characters are Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux series, as well as, Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe’s Los Angeles.

What about you, Reds? What are some of the books where you believe the setting was as vital to the story as the characters? And just for the heck of it, strange man or wild bear in the woods? Strange man or wild bear in your house?

HALLIE EPHRON: And I wanted to talk about “the man or the bear”! What kind of bear? It makes a difference. What kind of man??? That makes a difference, too. We could talk wardrobe…

But addressing the question: Where’s the bear? And does setting make a difference. OMG yes!

Looking for creepy? You can’t do better than the deep South of Joe R. Lansdale’s EDGE OF DARK WATER. Or cold in Julia’s Adirondacks in winter (I read IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER huddled in a blanket.) Or Leonia Swann’s verdant Irish countryside where a flock of sheep come upon their dead shepherd, George, in THREE BAGS FULL. Or Ruth Rendell’s Notting Hill in PORTOBELLO.  

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Wait, in the woods? A bear, definitely. You’d just run.  Or whatever you’d do. And is the bear attacking you, or just..over there? 

A strange man not in a ranger outfit would terrify me.

And if I saw a bear in the kitchen, I’d just go back upstairs. And call Bear 911.

A man is much scarier–they have a different kind of intentions.

 I kinda  think it’s less setting and more…motivation.

And this is hilarious.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: We had this discussion during the family Zoom call. The girls and I agreed “bear in the woods” instead of “strange man in the woods,” but Spencer, the one man, began to ask, “What if it was an angry mother bear?” and somehow the conversation devolved into what the best ways to fight a bear might be.

As for the kitchen scenario, I’d rather see a man in the house - I figure I have a chance of talking him down, a la, Queen Elizabeth when she woke up in her bedroom with that strange man there. Plus, my Shih tzus might scare him off, where they’d probably get squashed by a bear.

Books where the locale is absolutely central? I’ll go back to my two most important early influences: Margaret Maron’s BOOTLEGGERS DAUGHTER series, and Archer Mayor’s Joe Gunther series. The former is so steeped in North Carolina, you can smell the curing tobacco and BBQ. The latter is utterly evocative of Vermont - I’ve said a reader could drive all across the state, navigating solely from Mayor’s books.

RHYS BOWEN: There are so many variables in these decisions. If the strange man looks like a fellow hiker with backpack, and is walking purposefully up the trail I’d be happy to say good morning and pass him.  If I find him following me or sitting looking ‘strange’ then I’d not be happy. Clare tells me that this discussion has been going on for a long time on social media with women concerned that they will not be believed or be arrested if they fight back against a man. If they kill a bear nobody minds.

In my kitchen, definitely the bear. I’d make sure it has an easy exit then make a big noise to scare it off if it’s a black bear. A grizzly? I’d retreat until it had gone. Any my insurance would cover the damage.

Locale in books is so important to me. Think Prince of Tides. The locale was the story. IN my Constable Evans series the mountains play a big part in every plot.

LUCY BURDETTE: On the bear subject, definitely prefer to meet the bear rather than the man. According to Rhys Bown in the latest Molly Murphy book, all you have to do is make yourself look as big as possible and make a lot of noise. (Or am I hallucinating the bear in your book, Rhys?)

Setting: Kent Krueger is a master at this, both in series and standalones. Ditto for CJ Box’s Wyoming. And it seems like the Icelandic authors are amazing at writing setting, which is NO surprise, given how important that cold and treacherous landscape is. 

Okay, Readers, your turn. What books have a setting that you felt were as important as the story? And man or bear? If you're a dude, the same question applies (I just watched a documentary on serial killer Gacy and men are at risk, too, which is something I don't think we acknowledge enough).

Globe Trotting with Jeannette de Beauvoir

INGRID THOFT

Our own Lucy raised the issue of setting a few weeks ago—how well does a writer need to know their setting for it to ring true?—and today, Jeannette de Beauvoir joins us to share her experience with choosing the perfect place for her mysteries.  

Where in the World?
I wrote my first novel when I was eight years old. (It wasn’t very good.) I was living in my hometown of Angers, France, and it didn’t occur to me that Angers was a very nice place to live and would make an excellent setting for a book. Instead, I invented a place. I’m not going to blame the book’s awfulness on the venue I invented, but that should have told me something.

Over the years I followed up that rather pathetic beginning with a bunch of historical fiction rooted mostly in time—which has always been important to me—and in place only incidentally, merely because it happened to be where the events I used as a backdrop to my stories actually unfolded.

I remember the first time I realized how exciting it was for readers to read a novel set in a familiar place. It was one of Linda Barnes’ Carlotta Carlyle mysteries, and at the time I was living in Cambridge: I remember being entranced, not just by the story or the characters, but by the familiarity of the setting. I know that street! I eat at Mary Chung’s!

That familiarity delivered something a lot of the other mystery novels I was reading at the time didn’t: an instant physical rapport with the character. A sense of belonging in their world. And the more I thought about it, the more I wanted that to be part of my writing, too. 

It works two ways: people who live in the venue feel at home, and people visiting it for the first time feel like they’re coming home.

There’s a story about the wonderful suspense novelist Phyllis Whitney that’s probably apocryphal (though I hope it’s not): it’s said that she would decide where she next wanted to go on vacation—say, Greece—and that choice would then become her setting for her next book, her vacation turning into a (pleasant) research trip. I can say from experience that visiting a place through a novelist’s eyes really does bring a new dimension to one’s travel: one is always wondering what if my protagonist went here? Who might she meet there? Where could some adventure befall her? It’s a game I play now all the time, and even though most of the places I visit don’t end up actually being used in a book, the exercise is rather fun.

I fell in love with Montréal decades ago when I first visited, but it wasn’t until I started really thinking about the place as inspiring the story—instead of the other way around—that I did some serious research into the city’s past and found the historical events that inspired "Asylum" and "Deadly Jewels," my two mysteries centering on PR director Martine LeDuc. And it wasn’t until I’d lived in Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod for several years that I felt I really knew the place enough to situate a mystery series there; that’s the one I’m engaged in now, with wedding consultant Sydney Riley becoming what one of the shop owners in town calls “Provincetown’s answer to Jessica Fletcher.”

And while I love what every mystery novelist loves—readers contacting me about how they like a story, or my characters—what I love most of all is people who’ve lived here for decades telling me that I’ve really captured a sense of Ptown, that for them the venue is as much a character as the people who inhabit it.

I gave my dentist copies of my Montréal books to read before she and her husband went to Canada on vacation, and I was delighted when she came back and said, “okay, so I know that Martine prefers St. Viateur bagels to Fairmount bagels, but we tried both and I have to say I disagree with her.” While she obviously has no taste in bagels—Martine takes after me, professing St. Viateur allegiance in the long-established rivalry between the two bakeries—I was pleased that I’d made the city come alive for my dentist before she went, and enlivened it for her while she was there.

I’ll be honest: I’m not the world’s best mystery reader. We’ve all consumed authors who present startling twists at the end of their stories–Thomas H. Cook comes immediately to mind–but I’m the kind of reader who finishes any story—Agatha Christie, Jodi Picoult, anyone—and says, “Whoa, I never saw that coming.” I am not one of those who figures out who did it in the first three chapters. In fact, once I’ve finished reading a novel, I’m still muttering about how I still didn’t “get” this or that. I’m always surprised by the ending. So you could argue that someone as little engaged with plot as I am would indeed look to other ways to engage readers in a story.

But I like to think it’s more than that. I like to think that I’ve stumbled across something that’s fundamentally important: that where we are, where our stories take place, is important. That we as people, that our lives, are rooted somewhere. That context is as significant as plot. That Sydney Riley would be a different person if she lived in Albuquerque instead of Provincetown, and that her stories, even with similar plots, would play out differently there.

I’ll never visit some of the places I’ve read about in fiction, though at the hands of a skillful narrator I often feel as though I know them well. One of Mary Stewart’s books begins, “I met him in the street called Straight,” plunging the reader right into the pre-war souk of Damascus. Elleston Trevor’s spy scrambling through a wintry Moscow night made me understand how the city is arranged. (He, of course, apparently never visited the far-flung outposts of which he wrote; he stayed at his desk, armed with guides and maps.)But Sydney is real because the streets she walks on are real, the shops she visits are real, many of the people she encounters are real. So to tempt you to come visit Sydney’s town here on the tip of the Cape, here are some of her favorite things:

1. Best oyster bar: Mac’s Seafood on Shank Painter Rd. There’s a special “happy hour” when the raw bar is half-priced. Mac is a fisherman himself, and it shows.
2. Best museum: Instead of traipsing up the hill to the Monument, stay on MacMillan Wharf and take in the Pirate Museum, filled with artefacts from Black Sam Bellamy’s ship Whydah sunk in a nor’easter off Cape Cod.
3. Best way to get out on the water: Either a cruise around the harbor on the Bay Lady, or renting a 19-foot sailboat from Flyer’s.
4. Best place for a drink (summer): The Aqua Bar. Bring something from one of the vendors at the Aquarium Mall and enjoy a dinner and drink al fresco.
5. Best sunset: Herring Cove beach
6. Best to-go meal: Relish (try their gazpacho!)
7. Required activity: Art’s Dune Tours. You don’t know Ptown until you’ve been on one.
8. Sydney’s clothes shopping: The thrift shop at the Methodist church, Vintage in Vogue, and occasionally something from Marine Specialties.
9. Favorite view: When you’re on route 6 and come to the top of the last hill in Truro and suddenly Provincetown is tin view, lying curved around the water that changes color every day. Sydney often says she lives in a postcard. It never fails to make her smile.

These and many other places make Provincetown what it is for Sydney: home.

Is there a place where you've visited that "speaks" to you?  Why?  Jeannette is giving away two ebooks of her latest, "The Deadliest Blessing."  Comment to enter!

The Deadliest Blessing: A Provincetown Mystery​​
If there’s a dead body anywhere in Provincetown, wedding consultant Sydney Riley is going to be the one to find it! The seaside town’s annual Portuguese Festival is approaching and it looks like smooth sailing until Sydney’s neighbor decides to have some construction done in her home—and finds more than she bargained for inside her wall.

​Now Sydney is again balancing her work at the Race Point Inn with an unexpected adventure that will eventually involve fishermen, gunrunners, a mummified cat, a family fortune, misplaced heirs, a girl with a mysterious past, and lots and lots of Portuguese food.  The Blessing of the Fleet is coming up, and unless Sydney can find the key to a decades-old murder, it might yet come back to haunt everyone in this otherwise-peaceful fishing village.

Jeannette de Beauvoir
I’m a novelist, poet, and playwright, and my work has appeared in 15 countries and has been translated into 12 languages. I like to explore personal and moral questions through different literary genres and I’m the author, under various pseudonyms, of mystery novels, historical and contemporary fiction, an award-winning book of poetry, and a number of produced plays.
​​
As you can imagine, I love to write. All the time. And I’d love to have you read some more of what I’m writing! My blog is over at Goodreads, and you can also find my posts at LinkedIn. And then of course there’s my monthly newsletter, to which you can subscribe on my website.

Finally, I don’t just write; I also edit manuscripts (from simple copyediting to much more substantive work) and teach writing, along with directing writing workshops and retreats, both online and onsite. I’d be very happy to help you with your writing projects!

Homesick for a Place You've Never Been?

LUCY BURDETTE: Can you feel homesick for a place you've never been? This question came up recently in a wonderful review of DEATH ON THE MENU from reader Mary Garrett: 

"Can one be homesick for a place one has never visited? I would have said no, but after reading Lucy Burdette’s Key West mysteries, I feel a bit homesick for sunsets on the beach, Conch Tours, John Martini sculptures (I looked them up — playful! and looked up gumbo limbo trees, too). Now I want some key lime pie . . . as well as flan, mojito cake, and Cuban Mix sandwiches (recipes included)."

Shetland, Scotland (Wikipedia)

Thinking it over, I think she's right about homesickness for unfamiliar places. I feel that way about Shetland because of Ann Cleeves' series with its moody characters and even moodier setting, and Iceland, because of  the books of Arnaldur Indridiason and Ragnar Jonasson.

Reds, can you think of a place you've only visited fictionally that you yearn to visit again?

Baynes Map of Narnia, Wikipedia

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Narnia. Though it does have its pros and cons, that's for sure. Oh! Definitely Lyra's London-esque city in The Golden Compass. Again, pros and cons. Downton Abbey? Huh, again, under the right circumstances. And maybe the little town in Practical Magic. :-)   And I'd love to be in Oxford with Morse, even though way too many people get killed there. I guess it's all about knowing the rules.

INGRID THOFT: Definitely Shetland.  And Santa Teresa.  Hopefully, Kinsey would be there and we could get some quarter pounders with cheese and hang out.  I would love to visit the top floor of the department store the night that Corduroy slipped from his display case and explored the mattress department.  I’ll see you in Oxford, Hank, but I’ll be there for Hathaway! 

from Wikipedia

JENN McKINLAY: Yes. Definitely. Yes. Our own Deborah Crombie made me so homesick for the Notting Hill area of London that I set my own series there and, of course, then had to go visit. Thanks, Debs! Other fictional locations I long for are Chanel Cleeton's Havana, Alexander McCall Smith's Botswana, and I would really get a kick out of spending an afternoon in Mick Herron's Slough House. 

RHYS BOWEN: St Mary Mead, where life was simple (although occasionally dangerous). I'm not sure about Narnia, Hank, although I would like to meet Aslan. Definitely Oxford if I could meet Morse there. I have to confess that I've always had a hankering to go to Falco's Rome, just not stay in his apartment but with Helena's family instead.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Middle Earth, of course. Although I think I'd pass on Mirkwood and Mordor. And Hogwarts!!!! I really, really miss Hogwarts...

Lucy, your books made me homesick for Key West even before I came to visit. And now I really miss it. And Jenn, I love that my books made you want to be in Notting Hill. Now I reread YOUR Hat Shop books when I need a good dose of West London.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: The Germans have a word for this! (Of course they do.) Fernweh's literal translation is "far-sickness," but it connotes a longing to go to someplace you've never been. I'd like to go to the glamorous between-war world of Lady Georgie - Great Britain, the mysterious Balkans, and the south of France (with, obviously, a bankroll that enabled me to travel in style and comfort.) Speaking of style and comfort, I would embark on a trip on Agatha Christie's Orient Express, and then take the steamer Karnak up the Nile to Amelia Peabody's Egyptian digs. From the descriptions I've read and the photos I've seen, the British were "glamping" a hundred years before it caught on here. I could go for that.

HALLIE EPHRON: Istanbul. I took an art history course in college and learned about the former Greek Orthodox basilica with its many windows that make the domes look as if they're floating. And the city sounds so fascinating. And the history--Turkey being at the center of so many centuries of European history. And of course the food. And though I've been to Paris several times, I feel homesick for Amiee LeDuc's Paris, as I've experienced them in Cara Black's novels.

And you, red readers? Homesick for a place you've only visited in fiction?

A Special Place by Leslie Wheeler

LUCY BURDETTE: Leslie Wheeler is an old friend of the New England contingent of Reds--and we're so thrilled that she has a new novel out! Today she's talking about the importance of her setting--and offering a book giveaway to one lucky reader. Welcome Leslie!

LESLIE WHEELER: A college writing teacher of mine said that we write about what we love and hate. In Rattlesnake Hill, I’ve written about a place that’s very close to my heart: the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts. I love the area and the seventeen acres I own, especially the pond.

The pond was my father’s idea. Perhaps because he’d spent boyhood summers by a lake in northwestern Montana, he always wanted to live near fresh water. If there was no body of fresh water nearby, he created it. In Southern California, we had a swimming pool, as did many other families, but my father also installed a small Japanese pond, and at another home in Maryland, he built a miniscule waterfall.

My father picked the site for the Berkshire pond in a low-lying area behind the house, with tall pines at one end. Over the years, he showed such a keen interest in it that we dubbed him the Pond Master. Sometimes, he fussed over the pond. During one particularly dry summer, he extended a garden hose into it to raise the water level. But mostly, he enjoyed the pond. He could sit for hours in a chair, turned to give him a view of the water. He was a driven man in a demanding profession, and I think he found tranquility in that view.

Like my father, I feel duty-bound to preserve and protect the pond. I’ve battled beavers that tried to dam it, waged war on cattails and other weeds that threatened to overwhelm it, and when the pond filled with silt, I’ve had it dredged—not once, but several times.

The pond is also a source of great pleasure for me. I love watching how it changes from one season to the next, from spring green, spotted with tadpoles, to summer murky, fall crystal clear, and finally to winter frozen over. 

It serves as a barometer, too. If I want to find out how windy or rainy it is without going outside, I observe the pond’s surface. When its surface is so still that I can see the reflections of the trees in the woods beyond, I could sit for hours, like my father, taking in the beauty and peace.

A pond not unlike my pond figures in Rattlesnake Hill. It’s where Kathryn Stinson, my main character, goes when she needs a break. With all I put her through in the novel, I figured she needed a place where she could relax and regroup, if only for a little while.

Readers: Do you have a special place, indoors or outdoors, where you go when you want to get away from it all? Have you given your main character such a place, too? One of the commenters will receive an ARC of Rattlesnake Hill.

An award-winning author of American history books and biographies, Leslie Wheeler has written three living history mysteries: Murder at Plimoth Plantation, Murder at Gettysburg, and Murder at Spouters Point. Her short stories have appeared in such anthologies as Day of the Dark, Stories of Eclipse, and Level Best Books’ New England Crime Stories series, where she was formerly a co-editor. Leslie divides her time between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Berkshires, where she writes in a house overlooking a pond. Visit her website at www.lesliewheeler.com.

You can buy the book right here.

Location, Location, Location

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I’m in Bethesda Maryland today at Malice Domestic!  Whoo hoo! And photos to come.

Where are you? The wonderful David Burnsworth—who I met years ago in one of those serendipitous meetings at some conference and we instantly bonded—has changed his location for his third book.

Moving is a big deal—you get comfortable, then you have to pick up lock stock and book collection, and hope for the best in a new place.

Where was your last move? Where are you now?

David’s Brack Shelton is sticking with the south.

Home is Where You Keep Your Sunscreen

                   David Burnsworth

Charleston, South Carolina will always be home to my protagonist, Brack Pelton. My first two books, SOUTHERN HEAT and BURNING HEAT were set there. But with the third installment, BIG CITY HEAT, Brack gives Charleston a break and heads to the Capital of the South—Atlanta!

Realtors will say, “Location, location, location.” I couldn’t agree more. Some (probably even me) have called setting another character of the book. I now consider it more than that. Setting influences everything about the story. Winter in northern Maine or Wyoming could freeze appendages off. Certain parts of New York City or Chicago require bullet proof windows. The solitude of Denali might trigger introspection or loneliness.

I love Charleston because it is like no other place on earth. Antebellum homes on lower King Street, crabbing in the waterways of Johns Island, shopping in the Market, and sipping sweet tea at a beach bar on the Isle of Palms while overlooking the Atlantic Ocean are just a few of my favorite things. 

So is exploring the cobble stone streets or driving down Seventeen South toward Beaufort under the cover of live oaks bejeweled with Spanish Moss. The city’s part in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and current events. Mix in the Deep South climate of humidity approaching a hundred percent in the summer and calling Charleston special doesn’t do it justice.

 

So why did I pick Atlanta for book three? Like Charleston, I also lived in Atlanta at one time in my life. I felt a need to return, to see how the city of my teens had weathered time. And what I found was what started in the late seventies and early eighties as a boom town transformed the city into a cultural powerhouse. Every corner brings something to the table. Music, art, food, progress…Atlanta is absolutely drenched in its own diversity.

For many reasons, including giving me a more worldly outlook, my parents uprooted from what I’ll call rural America to the big city. I have to admit it took me quite a while to adapt. The experience forced me to change and adapt. And it certainly exposed me to a bigger world than I had been used to.

So, Brack had to go, too. This new book was a long time coming for me. I needed to take myself and Brack out of our shared comfort zone. Like for me on my research trip, he finds things are different in the metropolis. While challenging to write, it gave me a new cast of supporting characters to choose from and a different world to play in.

I read some authors because of the consistency of the setting and characters. And I read other authors because they change things up. My series’ home is Charleston.

But I’ll not be afraid of mixing things up from time to time. BIG CITY HEAT is me living this out.

Where are your favorite books set?

HANK:  Oh, gosh, that’s too hard. It depends on the story.  I guess—they’re set in a place that feels real. How about you? And check in, Reds and readers!  Where are you today?

  

David Burnsworth became fascinated with the Deep South at a young age. After a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Tennessee and fifteen years in the corporate world, he made the decision to write a novel. He is the author of both the Brack Pelton and the Blu Carraway Mystery Series. Having lived in Charleston on Sullivan’s Island for five years, the setting was a foregone conclusion. He and his wife call South Carolina home.

BIG CITY HEAT is his latest southern noir.