As far as overused opening lines go, I have always preferred "it was a dark and stormy night" over "once upon a time." The former situates a story both in time and atmosphere rather than simply in time. Indeed, in the inky dark shadows of most noir fiction, the setting of the story in the city (often New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco) is typically charged with some sort of atmospheric affect, which helps to explain the events as they unfold. The heat, the fog, the rain, the above-mentioned Santa Anas, set the scene and can be read as psychological as well as architectural precursors to some sort of devious deed. Indeed, the work is often described less as procedural whodunnits than a psychological unpacking of post-war trauma. The atmosphere of the city and architecture therein symbolizes that psychosis.
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