In the Mood

Creating mood through setting is important in crime fiction. Can you give examples from books that have inspired or moved you? Also, please share an evocative paragraph from your own work and tell us how you came to write it.

by Dietrich

My idea is to set the mood for a scene with as powerful a description as I can come up with, using the fewest words possible, and always keeping in mind that the story needs to keep moving forward.

To my mind, the master of setting mood was Cormac McCarthy. A...