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I think Los Angeles with its myriad of personalities, neighborhoods, and cultures, makes an excellent setting for crime writing. I’m reading the latest Michael
by Overtonwindow 7y ago
I think Los Angeles with its myriad of personalities, neighborhoods, and cultures, makes an excellent setting for crime writing. I’m reading the latest Michael Connelly right now and it’s just fascinating learning more about Los Angeles.
- whalesalad 7y agoAny other recommendations by him? I grew up here and would love to read some cool crime thrillers that are close to home.
- vixen99 7y agoHave almost everything he's published. Aside from The Poet and The Narrows (my loss probably) I would say take your pick. Connolly's a masterful writer and stylist which I've found means that he's rewarding to reread, not something I can say about some other best selling authors.
- mdorazio 7y agoIt helps that huge segments of the city are basically expensive ghettos with storied histories of racial tensions, crime, gangs, and drugs. And it doesn't hurt that the LAPD has such a bad reputation. It really is an easy place to set a crime story and have it still be believable.
- mc32 7y agoBut why not Chicago?
- SamReidHughes 7y agoWhat does Chicago have? Banks?
- mc32 7y agoLots of mob and machine politics and run of the mill crime good for pulpy novels.
- SamReidHughes 7y agoYeah, bigcorps, corruption, and a big shiny ball. L.A. has serial killers, disaffected body builders, criminal surfer gangs, kung fu sidekicks, crooked magicians, new age cults, disgruntled aerospace employees, gratuitously wealthy people, pornographers, and loads of driftwood in orbit around Hollywood, flitting from project to project. Chicago has Catholics and Perogies. Any crime story set in Chicago could be better done in New York or Philadelphia.
- fumar 7y agoThat is one interesting and reductionist take on Chicago. The south and west sides of the city are cultural melting pots. The north side also has its ethnic enclaves. I am not defending Chicago but as the only other true metropolis outside of NYC, its more than the two things you listed. The architecture alone gives a great backdrop to any story.
- SamReidHughes 7y agoIt certainly is reductionist!
- werber 7y agoChicago is far more diverse than that. There's a huge black community. There's a gigantic Puerto Rican and Latin American population. A sizeable Asian community. Hipsters. A steady influx of wide eyed Midwestern kids arriving every fall. There's plenty to write about, like a corn fed Americana noir (if such a thing doesn't exist already). It's lack of perceived weirdness is pretty weird for such a large city
- claudeganon 7y ago
- mdorazio 7y agoChicago is good for run-of-the-mill / noir crime stories, but the audience for those is limited. LA is a weird place in that pretty much anything crime-related is actually plausible, so the potential breadth of stories is a lot bigger. You could make a story about a group of Croatian street dancers laundering dirty Persian money through Venice beach dispensaries using couriers on electric scooters to move cash around and I would actually believe that's a thing that could be happening right now.
- casefields 7y agoYour example really amuses me and reminded me of the famous and real Zankou Chicken Murders: https://www.lamag.com/longform/the-zankou-chicken-murders/ https://www.lamag.com/longform/the-zankou-chicken-murders/
- mannykannot 7y agoLet's not forget Florida - or is its problem that reality sometimes strains credibility?.