When Setting Becomes More Than Just a Backdrop

Last week, the neon lights and constant buzz of the Las Vegas Strip surrounded me during a business conference. Las Vegas served as the landscape for my latest Fenway Stevenson mystery, but it wasn't the glitz of the Strip that captured my imagination, but the raw, unfiltered world just beyond the city limits.

In The Digital Coroner, Fenway finds herself 60 miles northeast of Vegas, at a casino and a museum where the setting is as much a character as any person walking through its doors. It's a reminder that some of the most powerful stories aren't just told through dialogue or action, but through the very ground they inhabit.

Think of the great mystery writers who understood this magic. Agatha Christie didn't just set Death on the Nile in Egypt—she made the river itself pulse with tension. Hilary Rose Berwick's Lavender & Foxglove series isn't just set in the French...Read More