Jay Ducassi is the Metro editor of The Miami Herald. He posed this question to Dennis Lehane, the bestselling author of Mystic River and other novels, who has edited a collection of stories -- to which he contributed one of his own -- titled Boston Noir (Akashic Books, $15.95 paperback):

Your novels, all the way through Mystic River, were set in the Boston area, and for some of that time you were attending Florida International University's Creative Writing Program in Miami. Can you talk about any influence that being in South Florida had on your writing? And do you see yourself in the future writing a novel set down here?

I realized back when I was in grad school that the only city with more novelists than Boston was Miami. I mean, that bitch is covered. You've got Hiaasen and Edna Buchanan and Elmore Leonard when he feels like popping in. Jim Hall, Les Standiford, both teachers of mine, Vicki Hendricks and the late Barbara Parker, both classmates of mine. You've got Carolina Garcia-Aguilera and Paul Levine and the ghost of Charles Willeford. That town is stocked. And the city itself lends itself to a type of writing -- Florida comic-gothic -- that isn't necessarily my forte. It's within my reach if I really exert myself, but it's not in my wheelhouse. So, I decided back in 1993 that I'd leave South Florida to other, far more capable folks.

As for the influence of being in South Florida, it was the FIU program that meant everything to me and still casts a long shadow over my work. The aforementioned teachers and fellow students meant a lot to me, but the people I put the most aesthetic face time in with were Lynne Barrett and John Dufresne. Whatever I didn't learn in undergrad, I learned from them.

John, in particular, kept hammering this idea at me that I was an urban novelist more than strictly a mystery novelist -- one is not better than the other, but they do have slightly different tastes on the palate -- and 15 years into my publishing career, I think it's safe to say I became more a writer of a city, Boston, than a writer of memorable mysteries because I still don't think I've written anything resembling a memorable plot. Well, except for Shutter Island, which is the only one of my novels that doesn't take place in the city. So, you know, there you go.

• Lehane joins others on the `Urban Noir' panel at 12:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 15, in Pavillion A: Denise Hamilton, ``Los Angeles Noir''; Les Standiford, ``Miami Noir''; S.J. Rozan, ``Bronx Noir'' and Paco Ignacio Taibo II, ``Mexico City Noir''.

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