Crime Fiction Author Guides
Discover the crime authors and novels that define a city, a setting, or a subgenre — from Las Vegas noir to small-town stalker thrillers. Curated recommendations from Phillip Strang, author of 150+ crime novels.
Brighton has always worn two faces — the glittering seafront for the tourists, and something far darker behind it — and the best crime novels set in Brighton know exactly which one to exploit.
No British city lends itself to crime fiction quite like Brighton. Its collision of Regency grandeur, seaside...
The best crime novels set in the Rocky Mountains understand something most thrillers don’t: that wilderness isn’t just a backdrop — it’s an accomplice, a suspect, and sometimes the most dangerous character in the room.
Few landscapes on earth do more work in crime fiction than the Rocky...
The Best Crime Novels Set in Appalachia aren’t just mysteries with a mountain backdrop — they are unflinching portraits of a region where old wounds run deep, justice is complicated, and the land itself becomes a character with something to say.
Appalachia has always attracted writers willing to...
The Best Crime Novels Set in the Pacific Northwest don’t just use the region as a backdrop — they treat its perpetual grey skies, fractured communities, and brooding wilderness as a character in their own right, one that shapes every suspect, every motive, and every act of violence.
Few settings...
The Best Crime Novels Set in the American South don’t merely use the region as backdrop — they treat its heat, its history, and its unresolved grief as the very engine of murder and consequence.
No other region of the United States generates crime fiction with quite the same mixture of literary...
The Best Crime Novels Set in the American Midwest prove that wide open spaces and small forgotten towns can harbour darkness every bit as consuming as any city noir.
There is a persistent myth that crime fiction belongs to the city — to rain-slicked alleyways, corrupt precincts, and the anonymous cruelty...
The best crime novels set in New England don’t merely use the region as backdrop — they let its granite coastlines, insular communities, and long institutional memories become co-conspirators in the crime itself.
Ask a serious crime reader where America hides its darkest secrets, and the answer...
The best crime novels set in the Hamptons understand a fundamental truth: that enormous wealth does not insulate people from violence — it merely makes the violence more elegantly dressed.
There is something almost too perfect about the Hamptons as a crime fiction setting. The best crime novels set in...
The Best Crime Novels Set in Cape Cod prove that paradise and murder make the most irresistible of bedfellows — and that the Atlantic fog conceals far more than sea spray.
Cape Cod is one of those rare places in American geography that has always felt slightly apart from the mainland — physically, culturally,...
The best crime novels set in Nevada understand something that lesser thrillers miss entirely: in a state defined by artifice and emptiness, the truth is always the most dangerous thing in the room.
Nevada is one of American crime fiction’s most underused and misunderstood settings. Too many writers...
The best crime novels set in Alaska don’t just use the landscape as backdrop — they weaponise it, making the frozen wilderness as much a threat as any murderer.
Alaska is unlike any other setting in crime fiction. The best crime novels set in Alaska share a defining quality: the land itself is...
No American state does crime fiction quite like Louisiana — and the Best Crime Novels Set in Louisiana prove that the bayou is as much a character as the killers who haunt it.
Louisiana has always been a place where the rules bend. The heat warps judgment, the swamps swallow secrets, and the culture...