Transporting the reader to a particular place is essential, argues Margaret Cannon, crime-fiction columnist for The Globe and Mail. There are two ways of doing this, in her opinion. Either you can have an imaginary set of stock places, as Agatha Christie did in the manor house or the vicarage where she set her whodunits, or you can describe a room or landscape or a city so superbly that it becomes transformed into a place of mystery and suspense.