Mystery authors Margaret Maron and Sarah Shaber both set their series in this part of North Carolina. They both do a good job with setting the scene.
James Lee Burke is something of a minor hero here in south Louisiana for his Dave Robicheaux novels. As a non-native, I have to admit that they’re evocative and sympathetic.
The novel Strangers by Dean Koontz takes place at a fictional motel 8 miles outside of the town I grew up in. Reading it while I still lived there was pretty creepy.
The only one I can think of for Boise at the moment is A Catskill Eagle by Robert B. Parker. Only part of the story takes place in Idaho, but I particularly enjoyed Parker’s description of downtown Boise.
We have many writers here, but two fiction writers of note are Dana Stabenow and Sue Henry.
Their novels are generally geographically correct and reflect much of the Alaska way of life.
There are, of course, dozens of novels set in Montreal, but one of this country’s most famous novels – Bonheur d’Occasion or The Tin Flute in English – is all about life in my neighbourhood during World War II. It’s a big deal here. We have a park named after the novel, and the title of the novel is spelled in bricks at our metro station.
By contrast, I haven’t read a single piece of fiction, other than my own, set in the town I grew up in, though it’s mentioned (and spelled wrong) in a novel written in 1901.
Nottingham born author Alan Sillitoe wrote Saturday Night and Sunday Morning which, according to older relatives I’ve asked, gives a very accurate portrayal of working class life in 1950s Nottingham.
Although Janet Evanovich now lives in New Hampshire, and sets her stories in Trenton, she actually grew up in my home town of South River, New Jersey. South River shows up now and again in her books, but her descriptions are so vague that you can’t tell if they’re true o life or not. My wife, who grew up closer to Trenton, says that she occasionally trips up – describing stores in Quaker Bridge Mall that are, in fact, long gone. But she’s evidently taken some trips back to her old state, and there are fewer of those slip-ups now.
Mystery writer Troy Soos must have lived in South River, too, because it says on the jacket that he plaed in the S.R. Little League. But none of his books seem to be set in South River.
Maybe I’m going to have to write a story set in South River, just so that it gets on the literary map.
Part of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods takes place in northern Illinois.
The only novel I can remember ever reading that’s set in rural northwest Ohio is A Simple Plan. Forget the author…but, Brrrrr… the story is brutal! There weren’t any place names mentioned that I remember recognizing, but the story definitely was set in my neck of the woods, which usually gets absolutely no attention in the fiction world. It’s kinda flat and not very populated here, perhaps that’s why.
As I’ve mentioned before, Who Has Seen the Wind by W. O. Mitchell is set in my home town, Weyburn, Saskatchewan. It’s about a young boy growing up in the Prairies many years ago. Mitchell changed all the names, but I went to that school and recognize some of the people.
Now I’m in Vancouver, and there are quite a few books set here. I recently read a mystery called Flesh Wound by Paul Grescoe, which isn’t bad, and there are a couple set in Vancouver’s Chinatown in the 1930s, which I liked but have packed away right now. There are lots more.
I live in New England… there are too many books set in this area to count. Although, if you restrict those books to ones that accurately portay New England, the number dwindles. Like this quote from one of my new stories?
The most recent book I’ve read (just within the past week) that takes place around here is The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve. Horribly written, but at least she’s more or less accurate when it comes to describing the Isles of Shoals.
Given that you can’t throw a rock without hitting a writer in the north east, I get confused as to if a writer is local or one of national aclaim, so you all might have a clue who they are.
Books set in New Hampshire that I’ve only read a very few of: Our Town by Thornton Wilder; The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving (others of his too, I just don’t remember which.); Salem Falls by Jodi Picoult;Cameo Lake by Susan Wilson (haven’t read it, but at amazon it has one of the strangest reviews I’ve ever read…the reader wasn’t “used to” 3rd person POV!); A Separate Peace by John Knowles ; Affliction by Russell Banks; Boy in the Water by Stephen Dobyns ; The Strange Death of Mistress Coffin by Robert J. Begiebing (a lot of people like this a lot more than I did); Buried Dreams by Brendan DuBois ; The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis (weird movie) ; The Final Judgement by Richard North Patterson blah blah blah
Nicholas Sparks’ books are usually around costal NC not far from me.
Niki
The 1987 Pulitzer Prize for fiction was awarded to Peter Taylor for A Summons to Memphis.
I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I haven’t read it and don’t know anything about it, and so can’t comment on its accuracy or lack thereof.
Oh god, it’s a small world! I go to school at University of La Verne! I cross that intersection every day too!
Gail Bowen writes contemporary mysteries set in Saskatchewan. In the ones that I’ve read (I’ve fallen behind recently) I thought she pretty much nailed it.
I still recall reading one of her first books about 15 years ago on a recommendation from a friend who commented on its roman a clef nature, and making a point of going through the novel and picking out certain characters, including then current and former premiers of the province. It was great fun.
Various setting around the province were prominently featured in her books. Another of her earlier novels was titled Murder at the Mendel an art gallery in Saskatoon. For some reason, the title was changed to a very generic Love and Murder when sold in the US. Dunno why they thought a Saskatoon art gallery’s name would be offputting to those south of the border.
I was annoyed when CTV started a series of t.v. movies based on Gail Bowen’s novels and moved the setting to Toronto.
Oddly enough, when I clicked on this thread, I was going to mention The Rosary Murders. A substantial portion of the action in the book takes place at the Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit, which is less than a mile from where I live. I’ll walk there occasionally when I feel like stretching my legs.
To throw in something additional, many (although not all) of Elmore Leonard’s books are set in Detroit.
I live in London so there are one or two books set here, but more specifically i live near Wibledon Common. Home of the Wombles (gritty social satire on the benefits of re-cycling).
http://www.wombles.easyweb-solutions.co.uk/
We also have the Wimbledon Poisoner stories.
Can’t move in Oxford for “Inspector Morse” memorabilia …
(Can think of a few others, too - Dorothy Sayers’s Gaudy Night, Edmund Crispin’s The Moving Toyshop, Max Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson, Brian Aldiss’s Greybeard … there’s probably more. Probably lots more.)
Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones is set in Pennsylvania, around West Chester, near where I grew up and currently live. (Sebold’s father was a professor at U of Penn, so she grew up in the area, I believe.) Certainly her descriptions of the area and even her recreation of local speech patterns are dead-on.