Many of the writers live in neighborhoods they write about, but even those such as Disher, Temple, and Lindy Cameron, who live in the country, prefer a city-central setting. The seedy back lanes of the CBD were used to great effect in Caroline Morwood's The Blessing File , where bookseller Lyn Blessing ran a second-hand bookshop. The lanes reappear full of smart cafes where Shane Maloney's exasperated political minder Murray Whelan might grab a bite. The wharfs and docklands, central yet desolate, recur throughout our crime fiction as the settings for numerous shady meetings and violent ends. The inner city appeals because it's crowded and chaotic.
People walk and use public transport.
There's trams and scooters and bicycles. It's lived in. It's the lack of public transport that keeps Shane Maloney from sending Murray Whelan into the outer suburbs. He too is unusual, in that he is based in the Mornington Peninsula and works the creepy rural fringes of the city, where so many of our real crime stories find their unhappy endings in shallow graves. But in his next novel, says Disher, even Challis will have to travel into the heart of Melbourne.