(Courtesy photo via Amazon.com)

James Anderson uses isolated areas of Utah’s deserts as a character of sorts in his novel, "The Never-Open Desert Diner."

Those who’ve lived in the desert for any amount of time understand it can be a different sort of place, to say the least.

That’s part of the reason it makes such a good setting for suspenseful fiction. James Anderson uses isolated areas of Utah’s deserts as a character of sorts in his novel, "The Never-Open Desert Diner."