The Texas accent is a dead give-away. I write British crime novels—the Superintendent Duncan Kincaid/Inspector Gemma James series—but I'm as native to Texas as a twang and chicken-fried steak. So why the cultural schizophrenia?

I've said I think I was born an Anglophile. From childhood I read, ate, slept, and dreamed England. My imagination seemed rooted there, and when I finally visited England for the first time in my early twenties, I felt as if every molecule in my body had suddenly lined up and clicked into place.

Over the next few years I lived in England and in Scotland, and once back in Texas I found myself suffering from a profound sense of homesickness for Britain. Hence the idea for the series; logic suggested that if I attached my detectives to Scotland Yard, they could travel all over England investigating crimes and I would have an excuse to visit all the places they needed to go—and so it came to be.

What I didn't foresee was that over the course of fourteen (so far) novels, having based my characters in London, the city would become my second home. Although Duncan and Gemma and their colleagues sometimes investigate cases outside of the city (as in the upcoming No Mark Upon Her, which takes them to Henley-on-Thames), more than half the novels are set in London's various neighborhoods, and at least some part of all the books takes place in London. This requires, obviously, that I should spend a great deal of time in London. Very clever of me, I say.

Research in London? Oooh, sounds so glamorous, doesn't it?

Well, yes... and, no.

London is glamorous, period. (Or “full stop” in Brit-lish.) It's my favorite city in the world, and I love it with an abiding passion. Whenever I arrive in London, just taking the cab from Paddington Station makes me giddy. I love driving through familiar streets, or across Hyde Park, breathing London air (which just feels indefinably different), watching the whirl of black taxis and red buses and more-than-a-little-mad cyclists.

This is a city where just getting from A to B (or A to Zed) can mean driving along the Thames Embankment, or past Westminster Abbey; where a regular bus route takes you down Baker Street; or where an evening concert means a walk across Westminster Bridge at sunset. History, and for writers and readers, story, are woven into every street and park and view. (The first place I sought on my very first trip to London? 110A Piccadilly—Lord Peter Wimsey's fictional address. It was Dorothy Sayer's subtle salute to 221B Baker Street, home to Sherlock Holmes.) You just can't get away from detectives.

I've often asked my London friends if they take this stunning city for granted. They always say no.

Yet my detectives seldom are called to solve crimes in palaces or museums or the Houses of Parliament. Most cases, and my characters' lives, happen in ordinary places. And what I've discovered is that it's the ordinary places that fascinate me most.

Most London neighborhoods grew from villages. Each has its own character and history, and I don't think I'll ever tire of the joy of the familiar (Notting Hill, where my characters live and where I stay most often; Kensington, Earl's Court, Chelsea, Belgravia, Soho) or the thrill of discovering something, and somewhere, new. In the most recent book, Necessary as Blood, it was the East End, where thriving hip and multi-cultural London meets the specter of Whitechapel, the Kray twins, and Jack the Ripper.

In a Dark House took me to Southwark, south of the river, borough of historic fires, docks, warehouses, and the London of Dickens's childhood. In Where Memories Lie I got to explore the chic auction houses of South Kensington and the oh-so-elegant mansions of Chelsea's Cheyne Walk.

But what is woven through all of these books is the fabric of everyday life, my favorite bits of London, the things that most visitors never see. Falafel King, the take-away falafel bar below the Westway on Portobello Road. Mr. Christian's, the tiny deli on Elgin Crescent in Notting Hill. The rowers on Putney Reach, seen from Putney Bridge. The discount book shop at Notting Hill Gate. Denmark Street in Soho, the half-block of guitar shops, where every guitarist in England worth his (or her) salt has bought a guitar—or several. Benjy's, the working man's caff across from Earl's Court Tube Station, where you can get a proper fry-up and endless cups of industrial tea for a couple of quid. The flower stall in front of St. Mary Abbot's Church in Kensington. Postman's Park, near St. Paul's Cathedral, best known as the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice, commemorating ordinary people who died saving the lives of others and might otherwise have been forgotten. Beigel Bake, the twenty-four hour bakery and deli in Brick Lane, famous for its salt beef sandwiches. The view of Brixton Underground Station from Café Nero across the road. The sound of buskers playing guitars on a Portobello Saturday. And now the crumbling sphinxes that guard the vanished exhibition hall in Crystal Palace Park (that's the next book...)

I see food seems to keep cropping up in this list—but food and drink are sensual and visceral, part of the complex of sight, smell, scent, taste, and touch that tie our memories and our imaginations to places, as they tie London to mine.

London, in both its grandeur and in its small and intimate ways, becomes a character in the novels. I want to share this London—my London—with readers, to transport them, if I can, to this great sprawling hodge-podge of a city, to lead them into the places you don't see from the Big Bus, the places where anything, and everything, can happen. And maybe, just maybe, I'll spark someone else's life-long love affair. Come along for the journey. It might be yours.

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Three-time Macavity winner Deborah Crombie is the author of fourteen Kincaid/James novels. No Mark Upon Her will be published by Macmillan UK in Aug. 2011 and Wm. Morrow in Feb. 2012. She is currently at work on #15.