Importance of Setting

I was recently reading The Blue Edge of Midnight by Jonathon King. His books are largely set in the Everglades and the strange little "towns" that barely exist in that swampland.

It really got me to thinking about the importance of setting and how it can move the story forward -- and what it says about the characters.

The main character in this book is Max Freeman, a former Philadelphia cop who kills a young teen in a shootout one night. He's cleared in the shooting but leaves the force and eventually winds up in the Everglades. Hiding from his past?

Not only do the Everglades provide Freeman and place to hide, they provide a very exotic and little-known setting for the trouble he finds himself in. And it does speak of someone who is hiding from his past.

Other books that strike me -- and I'm dealing solely with mysteries that are not "historical" -- are Nevada Barr's "park ranger" series of novels. All her mysteries are set at national parks and certainly Blind Descent, set in a cave, is just scary.

Of course, these writers KNOW their settings. King lives in south Florida. Barr was a park ranger. Just like Robert Crais and Michael Connelly know the Los Angeles they write about and Loren D. Estelman knows the Detroit of his books.

It further dawned on me how much setting adds to a story when I started thinking about my own writing. As soon as I moved my stories' settings to the South, namely to places where I've lived, I think the stories improved dramatically -- and the setting became as much a character as the people populating my imaginary world.