Reading Execution, I was struck by how even though serious practitioners of heinous fiction eschew the locked-room murders of, say, Agatha Christie, they still have to find a way to create an isolated crime scene -- the lonely house on the outskirts of the village, the village cut off from the city, the woman who misses the bus and walks home late at night. The problem is the same -- putting victim and murderer in each other's sights; it is the setting that has changed.