CJ Box's series of Joe Pickett novels, as well as standalone books, have made him the winner of the Anthony Award, the Prix Calibre 38, the Macavity Award, the Gumshow Award, the Barry Award and the Edgar Award for the Best novel of 2008. US bestsellers, they have been translated into 21 languages. Box lives with his family outside Cheyenne, Wyoming. Visit his website at www.cjbox.net. Three Weeks to Say Goodbye, hailed by Harlan Coben as "a non-stop thrill ride" is his UK debut, and is published this week.
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"The dirty little secret about the very best contemporary crime novels is that it often doesn't matter much who did it and why, but where the story is set. Solving the crime is simply a vehicle to travel through the territory. Reading the best crime novels about specific locations by authors who live there and own their home turf is like visiting with the ultimate know-it-all guide who moonlights as a voyeur.
"I write thrillers set in the Rocky Mountains because I want to shine a clear-eyed light on the region, its issues and people. That light can alternate between loving and harsh, but it must provide clarity. My latest novel, Three Weeks to Say Goodbye, is based on a true story in which a young couple is ordered to return their adopted baby to certain danger. It's set in Denver and Montana. When you read it I want you to feel like you're there – struggling, suffering, and plotting righteous revenge with the characters while the snow falls and the mountains loom over your shoulder and your life and hopes plunge into a death spiral. And feel, once the book is over, that you've been someplace very real."
1. Washington DC / George Pelecanos
No one writes about race, class, crime, and urban dreams and nightmares in the US capital better than Pelecanos. By turns brutal, nuanced, and tender, this is the DC visitors rarely experience.
Suggested titles: The Night Gardener, Right As Rain, Hell to Pay.
2. Montana / James Crumley
There's a reason why so many first-class crime novelists revered the late James Crumley. Crumley resurrected the tough but literary crime novel and set it under a Big Sky and practically defined contemporary American noir.
Suggested titles: The Last Good Kiss, The Mexican Tree Duck, The Wrong Case.
3. Los Angeles / Michael Connelly
Although it's almost sacrilegious not to give this one over to Raymond Chandler or James Ellroy, Connelly's Harry Bosch novels capture the contemporary feel, look, sights, sounds, and politics of The City of Angels with unerring accuracy and verve.
Suggested titles: The Harry Bosch novels, starting with The Black Echo.
4. New York and New Jersey / Richard Price
A language star, Price specialises in intense long-form cinéma vérité –style novels of fully realised characters in a you-are-there urban world. By the time you finish his novels you feel like you grew up in the Big Apple.
Suggested titles: Lush Life, Clockers, The Wanderers.
5. Louisiana / James Lee Burke
Burke incorporates the sights, smells, weather, politics, villains, and multiple histories and tangled racial storylines of south Louisiana into a world of its own that would be otherwise impenetrable. You'll find yourself sweating and smelling swamp water along with flawed hero Dave Robicheaux.
Suggested titles: Purple Cane Road, Tin Roof Blowdown.
6. Baltimore / Laura Lippman
Lippman is a former journalist who grew up in Baltimore and returned to write about it from the inside out. Like a painter, she illustrates the mean and kind streets of this fascinatingly American city on a big canvas.
Suggested titles: Baltimore Blues, What the Dead Know, To the Power of Three.
7. New Mexico / Tony Hillerman
Weaving the American Indian culture as well as the landscape of the desert south-west into crime fiction, Hillerman pioneered his own outdoor/mystery genre. Grounded in real-life problems and local colour, Hillerman's novels are a psychic guidebook to the region.
Suggested titles: Skinwalkers, The Thief of Time.
8. Boston / Dennis Lehane
This is not the Boston of Brahmins and blue-bloods, but blistering tour-de-force examinations of the gritty neighborhoods of Dorchester and multi-generational relationships that are the beating heart of the city. The past is always present and passions run deep, dark and long. Buckle up.
Suggested titles: Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone.
9. Florida / Carl Hiaasen
Carl Hiaasen satirises the changing culture of his beloved Florida in huge, hilarious, and bitter brush-strokes. No one is safe: tourists, developers, politicians, rednecks, do-gooders, or the overly zealous (although environmentalists come out OK). Eccentrics abound. After all, it's Florida. Suggested titles: Double Whammy, Stormy Weather, Sick Puppy.
10. Chicago / Sara Paretsky
For those curious about "The Chicago Way" and the most American of all American big cities, Paretsky's flinty female protagonist VI Warshawski charts a particularly tough-minded course through some very authentic neighborhoods. Filled with unapologetic opinions and sharp elbows, this is the Chicago visitors love, loathe, or both.
Suggested titles: Toxic Shock, Blacklist