Location, Location, Location - Real or Fiction

I want to talk real estate. No, I haven’t become an agent, although the temptation is strong given the pandemic sales boom in New Zealand. Am I in the wrong business? Yeah, nah, as the Kiwis would say. Financially it pays better, but would it be as much fun as getting away with murder? 

Real estate is important to writers. We need homes, mansions, pubs, parks, beaches and more to maim, stab, shoot, poison, garotte, dismember and do other dastardly deeds to our victims. Then there are the courts and prisons where justice can prevail – or be denied. Land and properties are essential ingredients for our plots. 

Yet, is it better to choose real locations, or make them up? 

The question surfaced after a binge with Peter Temple. I wish it had been at the bar of the mythical Prince of Prussia. Sadly, I found his Jack Irish novels too late. I could see, feel, taste, smell the Fitzroy that Temple wrote about. It was my backyard in the early ‘80s as a journo at the ABC. From the seedy pubs to the grungy racetracks (where I recorded the world’s shortest interview with Kerry Packer) Temple brought inner Melbourne back to my fingertips, even though I was across the Tasman in Auckland. 

Then I read The Broken Shore where the protagonist had escaped city policing for coastal Victoria. The narrative took me through familiar scenery: Port Fairy, Port Campbell, Portland. Yet, Temple’s setting was a fictional town – Port Munro. An amalgamation of all – or none? It didn’t matter because I loved the book – and every other Peter Temple story.

I’ve opted for real places in my novels. As a debut author, I wanted the comfort of familiar territory to write about. The main crime scenes in Tugga’s Mob can be found near Lorne and Terrigal in Australia; Coromandel and Muriwai in New Zealand. Three sites I had visited many times, the New South Wales murder locale was a morning ramble. However, the headland impressed and demanded a place in the book. Fortunately, I took enough photos to serve as prompts. 

I’ve repeated the pattern with the next two stories in what has become the Spotlight series. My current affairs television crew from Melbourne keep finding bodies. It’s fun to choose a crime scene, investigate it with my characters, take many photos, return to the garret and weave the plot together. Real locations work well for me.