New Mexico Crime Fiction: Fertile Soil in a Harsh Environment

Land of Enchantment.  Land of violent crime.

New Mexico's two faces, both compelling.  Both great subjects for novelists.

Tony Hillerman built a legacy introducing America to crime and crime fighters on the Navajo reservation.

Michael McGarrity became a franchise writing about violent crime in a state where he knew law enforcement first hand. 

A contest in Tony Hillerman's honor produced Christine Barber, whose first book The Replacement Child captured a side of Santa Fe no one else had previously tackled--the sad story of northern New Mexico's heroin culture.  The contest has continued to attract talented, unheralded novelists writing mysteries and crime fiction.

As Richard Santos has written, "There’s a long history of crime novelists not only writing in, but writing about New Mexico. After centuries of tribal warfare, Spanish invasion, the Pueblo Revolt, a couple forgotten Civil War battles, the wild west, Billy the Kid, and the Atomic bomb, New Mexico’s history reads like bloody crime fiction. So it’s not surprising that so many mystery authors have been drawn to the Land of Enchantment."

I'd been a prosecutor in Philadelphia before moving to New Mexico.  Immediately I as struck by the odd, bizarre and extremely violent subculture of crime throughout the state.  In future posts I will discuss some of the cases that stood over the years.

I'd go so far to say that there is a unique character to crime in New Mexico.  It is frequently the stuff you think you'd find only in off-beat, darkly humorous crime novels.  I think that is one of the reasons why the Breaking Bad series was so successful.  It blossomed in New Mexico as it would not have done had the series been set elsewhere.   There was a newness to the settings.  The characters were unique.  We'd never seen anything like them before.  Even the light was different.

Albuquerque proudly celebrated Walter White.  What other large city would claim as its hero a high school teacher turned murderous drug lord?

The environment is dry and harsh, unforgiving, swinging from extreme colds to extreme heat.  Its food is painfully spicy at times.  Its high air is thin.  Its winds unrelenting.  Its autumns spectacularly beautiful.

It is a crossroads of cultures, the place of the bloodiest prison riot in American history, home to a world famous opera, the world's largest balloon fiesta, two of the country's most important national laboratories.

People the world over know of Santa Fe.  In Paris, Edinburgh, Rome,  I'd say I was from New Mexico and people who live in some of the world's greatest cities would tell me how lucky I was to live near Santa Fe, somewhere they always wanted to visit.  And was Albuquerque really as bad as it appeared on that television show about the high school teacher turned drug lord?

New Mexcio has always had one of the nation's highest crime rates.  And yet it is such a small stage, its population dwarfed by immense, empty spaces.

It is a compact stage, where actors and stories won't get lost among props and special effects.
 
It is simply a great setting for crime fiction.