Rod Reynolds, whose new pychological thriller Black Reed Bay has just been published in paperback, sets the scene for his favourite literary crime settings.

Hell Bay by Kate Rhodes

Set on the tiny Scilly Isle of Bryher, the importance of location to this novel cannot be overstated, as it takes the locked-room concept and translates it to an entire island. With remote beaches, hidden coves and sheer drops seemingly around every corner, this is a great example of a book that wrings every drop of tension out of its atmospheric and claustrophobic setting.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

McCarthy’s masterpiece is set along the Texas-Mexico border in the mid-nineteenth century – but this is not the Wild West we’ve come to know from Hollywood. Brutal, savage and merciless, John Wayne wouldn’t have lasted five minutes here: an apocalyptic wasteland and moral vacuum, populated only with predators and prey.

The Neon Rain by James Lee Burke

The Neon Rain is the first of the Robicheaux books, but you really could pick any from this series set in Louisiana. From his renderings of New Orleans to rural New Iberia parish, there might not be a better writer in the world at bringing his settings to life with evocative prose.

The Devil In The Marshalsea by Antonia Hodgson

It’s a mark of the author’s brilliance that the minute I put this book down, I wanted to forget it. Or, at least, the harrowing and disturbing depiction of London’s infamous debtor’s prison. Antonia Hodgson creates an entire world within the prison’s four walls, one where life is cheap and violence is inescapable; a place so horrific, for many of the inmates, a swift death would come as a welcome blessing.

Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace

Set in August 1946, Tokyo is a city of rubble and ashes in the immediate aftermath of WW2. The wretched survivors drift through the devastation like ghosts, and those that do remember want only to forget. Peace is a genius at making a time and place all his own, and this version of Tokyo is a nightmarish dreamscape, the dust that coats the ruins like a shroud of shame, slowly suffocating anyone left alive.