Houston is...big. Read David Lindsey's murder mysteries set there to get a sense of the enormity of the place, which is sort of several cities in one.
And it is humid. I've read that the British foreign office considers Houston a hardship post due to the weather and pays their consular staff there more money.
But Lindsey makes the sparkling buildings and Buffalo Bayou and the ship channel and the luxury homes near Rice University come alive. He worked Houston better in those books than Robert B. Parker did Boston.
Oh: a girl gave me a book by a Mexican-American lawyer that is a morality tale, set in Dallas. He slams Highland Park for the snobs and crooked lawyers there, too. I learned a lot about lawyers in it. It's, "The Color of Law", by Mark Gimenez, who has clearly read, "To Kill a Mockingbird." He admits that it inspired his modern day tale about a black hooker charged with murder and her finally-noble attorney. It's a better book than I expected.
Now,I'll let Houston Rick and any other Houston lawyers have a crack at this.