Santa Teresa (fictional city)

For the neighborhood in southern San Jose, California, USA, see Santa Teresa, San Jose, California.

Santa Teresa has been used by several authors as the name of an invented city.

Ross Macdonald

Santa Teresa was created by Ross Macdonald as a fictionalised version of Santa Barbara, California in his mystery The Moving Target (1949).[1] In his book The Underground Man (1971), he again uses Santa Teresa as the principal locale.

Sue Grafton

In the 1980s, the writer Sue Grafton began using a fictional Santa Teresa as the setting for her novels featuring her lead character Kinsey Millhone, a fictional female private investigator.[2] Millhone is the protagonist of Grafton's ongoing "alphabet mysteries" series of novels.[3][4] Grafton chose the setting as a tribute to Macdonald, an acknowledged influence.[5] In the Kinsey Millhone version, the town has a population of 85,000 and has a small airport.

Roberto Bolaño

Roberto Bolaño sets his novel 2666 (2004), whose central theme is the female homicides in Ciudad Juárez, in a northern Mexican city he calls Santa Teresa. This fictional city had already appeared in his earlier novel The Savage Detectives.

Notes and references

  1. Priestman, Martin (2003). The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction. Cambridge University Press.
  2. Everett, Todd (1991-05-23). "Mystery Town: Whodunit author Sue Grafton lines in Santa Barbara and sets her tales in Santa Teresa". Los Angeles Times. p. J15.
  3. Hawkes, Ellen (1990-02-18). "G IS FOR GRAFTON Instead of Killing Her Ex-Husband, Sue Grafton Created a Smart-Mouthed, Hard-Boiled (and Incidentally Female) Detective Named Kinsey Millhone". Los Angeles Times Magazine. p. 20.
  4. Natalie Hevener Kaufman, Carol McGinnis Kay (1997). "G" Is for Grafton: The World of Kinsey Millhone (Hardcover ed.). Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 0-8050-5446-4.
  5. Nolan, Tom. "Ross Macdonald". BookSense. Retrieved 2008-06-01.


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