I try not to get involved with those games or quizzes on Facebook. Thank you very much, but I can waste time on my own.
But the one that is still circulating about how many states you’ve visited drew me in. I wasn’t too surprised that the quiz showed that the only states I haven’t visited are Hawaii, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, and North Dakota.
I immediately had two thoughts: "I need a road trip" and "I thought I had been to many of these states."
And I have…through mysteries.
When the novels are so detailed in their scenery, it makes me feel as if I am there. As they should.
So here’s a look at why I thought I had been to some of these states.
WYOMING
Craig Johnson’s Walt Longmire novels are set in Wyoming, but he also has dipped into other states such as in A Serpent’s Tooth, which deals with polygamy groups in Wyoming, which is right across the border from South Dakota, Utah, and Colorado.
C.J. Box's series about Joe Pickett, a Wyoming game warden, gives us breathtaking scenery, area politics, and a complex hero.
UTAH
Andrew Hunt’s 2012 novel City of Saints took us to Salt Lake City in 1930 when it was a fast-growing town with big-city concerns, dominated by the large, striking divisions between the wealthy and the middle class, and between those who follow the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and those who are not Mormons. The rough-hewn countryside, both beautiful and unforgiving, shrinks as the city limits expand. This Depression-era Utah background proves to be an evocative and mesmerizing setting for City of Saints. (Description comes from my review of City of Saints.)
Nevada Barr can be counted on to take us to just about every state in the union with her series heroine, park ranger Anna Pigeon. In The Rope, Barr takes us back to how Anna became a ranger, spending the summer working at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, which encompasses more than 1.2 million acres from Lees Ferry in Arizona to the Orange Cliffs of southern Utah.
Patricia Cornwell gave us a quick trip to Utah in her 1997 novel Unnatural Exposure in which Kay Scarpetta visits the U.S. government's huge biological defense
facility in Utah.
MONTANA
Nevada Barr comes through again with her 2001 Blood Lure that takes place in the Glacier/Waterton National Peace Park in Montana.
Michael Koryta’s Those Who Wish Me Dead, which I think is one of the best novels of 2013, skillfully melds a thrilling adventure story set against the Montana wilderness with a poignant coming of age story. To keep him safe, a teenage witness to murder is placed in a Montana wilderness training program for troubled teens run by a survival expert. Koryta, photo above, portrays vivid Montana landscapes pulsating with the smells and sounds of the great outdoors.
C.J. Box’s The Highway probably scared me more than any novel has. With three-dimensional characters and a gripping plot, The Highway is even more frightening because of its backstory. Box bases his story on the real hunt for a murderer working as a long-haul trucker—the FBI’s Highway Serial Killer Task Force. While the FBI’s task force statistics are numbing, Box never stoops to the prurient while delivering an edgy, compelling novel. Set in the remote corners of Montana, the isolated landscape lends a chilling atmosphere where the whine of an 18-wheeler and an unlit back road ratchet up the suspense. (Description comes from my review of The Highway.)
Carrie La Seur’s debut The Home Place, which I also listed as one of the best of 2013, chronicles a woman’s complicated relationship with her hometown of Billings, Montana, her relatives who stayed behind, and her ancestral history. In The Home Place, La Seur poignantly shows how characters are influenced by a sense of place, affecting their choices in life. The Montana land that makes up “the home place” has been owned by a family for generations, representing all that the family was, what it will be, and what it struggles with now. No one lives on the property, yet no one wants to sell the homestead either. This home place, about an hour from Billings, is a refuge, an offer of security, a place of contention, paralleling the family’s lives. (Description comes from my review of The Home Place.)
SOUTH DAKOTA
Elizabeth Little’s debut, Dear Daughter, which I also listed as one of the best of 2013, revolves around an unlikable protagonist with a biting personality who was sent to prison for her mother’s brutal murder. The case was sketchy at the time, and now, 10 years later, the conviction has been overturned because of mismanaged evidence. Scant clues lead Jane to the tiny, crumbling town of Adeline, South Dakota, and the adjacent community of Ardelle. The barren, soulless South Dakota towns succinctly mirror a struggle with identity in this exciting debut by Little, photo at right.
Lori G. Armstrong has two series set in her home state. Former Black Ops Army sniper Mercy Gunderson has an uneasy return to civilian life on her family’s ranch in South Dakota in three novels. Private investigator Julie Collins looks into crime near Bear Butte in four novels.
Photos: Michael Koryta, top, Elizabeth Little, right.
