American Popular Culture

My access to American popular culture is obviously limited. I get some clues about what is going on via the Internet or from conversations with family, but I do not have a television so I can not follow events and trends in the US on CNN. Most of my exposure to American popular culture recently is in the form of mystery novels. The bookstore on campus seems to have a never ending supply of American mystery novels. Recently I have been reading a lot of Patricia Cornwell and Sue Grafton. As I have noted earlier a lot of the better mystery novels written in the last two decades seem to be written by women and take place in the American South. Grafton's novel's take place in California, but Cornwell has centered most of her writing around Richmond, VA. I am not sure if this is significant or not. I think in decades past most American mystery writers were men and there was a much more northern tilt to the genre.