There are certain venues?times and places?that are problematical or, alternatively, rich for a novelist. If, for example, a novel is set in Honolulu on Saturday, December 6, 1941, any conversation between characters about what they plan to do tomorrow, go on a picnic, say, is fraught with meaning?to the reader, not to the characters. The same holds true for New York City in early September 2001, and so on. Carolyn Haines sets her new novel, Revenant, in August of 2005 on the Mississippi Coast, in Biloxi.
By Don Noble