Opening Salvos from James W. Ziskin

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.

Adrian McKinty’s Sean Duffy series has some of the most compelling openings I’ve ever read. They’re visual, gritty, and poetic. The writing is beautiful, and I confess to being envious. I love all seven of the Sean Duffy books, set in 1980s Belfast and Carrickfergus in Northern Ireland against the backdrop of the Troubles. 

Sean Duffy is a detective sergeant in the Royal Ulster Constabulary. But he happens to be Catholic, which means pretty much everyone hates him. His Protestant comrades distrust him, and the IRA wants him dead. It’s a terrific series. The fifth book, Rain Dogs, won the Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original in 2017. (Should I be jealous that my own Heart of Stone was also a finalist for that Edgar that year? Perhaps, but I’m not.) The series concluded last year with The Detective up Late, and I’ll miss Sean Duffy.

I’ve chosen the opening passage of The Cold Cold Ground (book 1), because, for me, it’s a masterpiece of description.

The scene roars to life, blitzing the reader with shapes, sounds, geometry, light, and colors. Flames and improvised bombs. (The use of the word “gasoline” instead of “petrol” intrigues me...) And I was so impressed by the brilliant choice to introduce the police helicopters—not by the beating of their rotors as you might expect—but by their searchlights casting about ineffectually, as they scan the dark, riotous landscape, only to land on others of their kind. But the most powerful image in this passage is that of the men yelling below decks on a torpedoed prison ship. Wow! You can’t describe desperation and panic any better than that. The curt, one-sentence paragraph at the end reminds us that it rains in Belfast. And it rains oily. A perfect codicil.

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As for my own modest efforts to create mood through setting, I thought it would be fitting to offer the opening of Heart of Stone, the very same book nominated for the Edgar that Adrian won. I’ve posted it before, but here it is again.

I remember the cool breath of the night woods on my neck. I see the glow of moonlight on the highest boughs, filtering down in a pale cast, weak and washed-out, fading into darkness. I smell the moss and the decay of the forest floor, heady, damp, musky. And I can taste the earthy mushrooms and bitter berries on my tongue. But most of all, I hear the pines whisper and sigh, their needles, like millions of tiny blades, carving voices into the breeze.

 

—Heart of Stone

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