My favorite author is Dean Koontz, and he is masterful at this. In any given "scene" you hear, see, or smell things that pull you in even deeper than you already were. I'm sure there are authors even better at this than he is, but he's the one I know and I couldn't agree with you more. On that note, thank you for the reminder. It's so easy to get stuck on pacing the structure of a story or getting caught up in pedantic details. The simple human experience is at the heart of all good writing.