In the Heat of the Night

The author uses the imagery of the southern landscape, the cottonfields, and the greenhouse to clearly illustrate the novel's rural setting.

AT TEN MINUTES TO THREE in the morning, the city of Wells lay inert, hot and stagnant. Most of its eleven thousand people tossed restlessly...

At the corner where the through highway crossed at right angles, the automatic air-conditioner in the Simon Pharmacy was on, its steady throb purring against the silence of the night. Across the street the one patrol car that the Wells police department kept out all night was pulled up against the curb.