Like many of my books, it started with a seed of an idea: a businessman wakes up in a hotel room that isn’t his to find a dead woman in the bathtub.
From there, bits and pieces began to materialize—who the businessman was, who the woman was, etc.—but the one thing that took a while to settle on was where the story should take place.
As Benjamin Percy notes in his book Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction, a story’s setting should serve mood and theme: “Setting can go from being one of the most lifeless to one of the most lively and functioning ingredients in your stories.”
Because of this, a setting can become so vital that it almost becomes a character unto itself. One recent example is Jordan Harper’s excellent Everybody Knows, which is not only set in Los Angeles, it’s set in Los Angeles—meaning, not only is LA quintessential to the plot, the story itself wouldn’t work nearly as well if it were set anywhere else.
Many times a book can be set anywhere and not lose much steam: a police detective hunting a killer will probably end up being the same story no matter where it takes place. Sure, the landscape and characters can change, but essentially it’ll be the same cat-and-mouse potboiler. Because of that, the setting doesn’t matter much—it’s nice window dressing, but it’s not essential to the overall plot.
For The Killing Room, once more bits and pieces of the story had begun to crystalize, I was split between two potential settings: Las Vegas or some Caribbean paradise vacation spot—Virgin Islands, St. Barts, Turks and Caicos, etc.
Had I settled on the latter, I’m sure many beats of the story would have stayed the same (especially the first fifty or so pages), but it also would have been a completely different book—because as the story progressed, I was able to take advantage of the setting, which then directed much of the action and choices the characters made.
Long after the fact, I wondered how many other crime novels took place in Vegas. Most that did, I figured, probably focused on gambling or casino heists or something along those lines—or were simply a destination for the characters in which they might spend several chapters and then go elsewhere (I’ve done this myself with my first Holly Lin thriller No Shelter, which opens in Vegas).
Turns out, there are several books set there, though not nearly as many as I would have imagined.
And so—because we’re talking about Vegas, baby, and it pays to keep luck on our side—here are seven crime novels that take place in the city of sin.
Skim Deep by Max Allan Collins
Retired world-class thief Nolan is living the straight life, running a restaurant and night club, and when he proposes to his longtime girlfriend, they head to Vegas for a quick wedding and honeymoon. But the honeymoon is short-lived when Nolan is grabbed by men at a casino because they think he’s casing the joint—and that’s just the start of the couple’s troubles.
Vegas Vendetta by Don Pendleton
Vietnam veteran Mack Bolan continues his war on the Mafia with the ninth book in the Executioner series. As the title suggests, this installment takes place in Vegas, and Bolan targets the mob’s casino—and squares off against two of the best hit men the Mafia has to offer.
Moon Music by Faye Kellerman
Detective Sergeant Romulus Poe leads a team to investigate the gruesome murder of a showgirl-turned-prostitute whose mutilated body is found in the Las Vegas desert. When a second body is discovered, similarly mutilated, the team realizes they may be dealing with a possible serial killer.
Heat by William Goldman
Nick Escalante hires himself out in Las Vegas, not as a mercenary, but as a “chaperone”—his own version of a bodyguard. He wants to save up enough money so he can move to Venice, Italy, but, well, Nick is a compulsive gambler. And things just get worse from there. (Note: While the novel is out of print, Goldman penned the screenplay for the 2015 Jason Statham film Wild Card, based on the novel.)
Void Moon by Michael Connelly
Cassie Black is a thief who served six years in prison due to manslaughter. Out on parole, she tries to keep her nose clean, but eventually agrees to rob a high roller in Las Vegas—a high roller who, it turns out, is a mob bagman, and before Cassie knows it, she’s on the run for her life.
Las Vegas Girl by Leslie Wolfe
Homicide detectives Laura Baxter and Jack Holt work in—yep, you guessed it—Las Vegas. And when a young girl is murdered in a swanky Vegas hotel in front of hundreds of witnesses, Baxter and Holt are sent in to investigate. As the investigation proceeds, the detectives discover more questions than answers, and the more they dig, the more they realize that their lives are now in danger.
Righteous by Joe Ide
For almost decade now Isaiah Quintabe has been haunted by his brother’s death and how the person who killed him has never been brought to justice. Then one day his late brother’s one-time fiancée asks him to find her younger sister, who is on the run along with her boyfriend from a nasty card shark. And so Isaiah and his buddy Dodson head to Vegas to investigate—where Isaiah stumbles across information that puts him one step closer to finding the person responsible for his brother’s death.
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