If you want to write about a nightclub where drugs are dealt, it is best not to give it the name of an actual club, unless you are willing to risk a lawsuit. Similarly, you can't put a raunchy nightclub in the wrong part of town. Readers who know the area won't believe it and will lose faith in your story. The final level at which a sophisticated crime writer uses setting is to make a particular place universal so that readers can transfer from the page to their own experience. You may not know Paretsky's Chicago, for example, but in reading about it, you are reminded of certain aspects of your own city.