I don’t recall any from Schenectady (though it gets mentioned a lot).
However, I grew up in Southold, NY, and it is the location for Trying Hard to Hear You by Sandra Scoppettone. Even better: the characters in the book are loosely based on me and my friends at the time. The book is somewhat of a classic in some circles.
Martin aidin set a substantial part of Almost Midnight around Norton AFB in San Bernardino, CA. He also destroys my hometown when he sets off a nuke on the peak of Mt. San Gorgonio. From what he describes in the book, a cop gets fried by the blast about 20 feet from a backpacking shop I used to work at.
Damn! That would be Martin Caidin, for those of you who hit the shift key instead of the Ctrl key.
I live in a very, very small town, so I was surprised to read a Nancy Drew book when I was younger where she visited my hometown, mentioning quite a few spots I knew well… I loved it!
For Arizona, in general, a lot of Barbara Kingsolver novels/short stories seem to be set here, 'specially Tucson.
Also from Michigan- A Cold Day in Paradise by Steve Hamilton. He has a whole series set in the Paradise/Soo area. (I grew up in Marquette, eh).
From Minnesota- John Sandford’s Prey series, especially Hidden Prey, set on da Range. Also Mark Munger Suomalaiset, set in the Duluth area.
I read that book more years ago than I care to recall. Good read
Many of Joseph Wambaugh’s books take place near when I grew up. In Delta Star the lead character has dinner in one of my favoite Mexican joints in Northeast LA.
I have posted this beofre, but when I read his book Fire Lover I freaked. I knew of the story, but never put the pieces together. I used to shop at John Orr’s father sporting good store, I had met John Orr at least once, and I went to high school with his little sister Susie. Several of the fires he set were at business I used to deal with. :eek: Scary.
Several of Vincent Bugliosi’s books also take place near when I grew up.
You only said “books,” so I guess A Tribe Apart counts, and The Hot Zone is very close indeed. No novels that I remember.
Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series is set in Trenton, NJ, mostly in the Chambersburg area. She messes up the geography a little, but she definitely gets the feel of the 'burg down pat (and the greater Trenton area as a whole). It’s summer beach-reading/airplane book fluff, but fun if you grew up around there. I’m pretty sure I went to high school with half of the characters.
The closest I get (to my knowledge) is Stephen King’s Maine-based stories. Derry, Castle Rock, etc. Those are common places I visited growing up (er - Derry = Bangor, Castle Rock = maybe Durham?), often for weekend shopping trips. (Sometimes we liked to walk by Stephen King’s house, just for fun. Nice house. Neat-o spider gate with bats and stuff.)
Though my family is not from Maine, we are close enough that most of the slang he uses in his books hit pretty damn close to the mark. Oh, ayuh. Ayuh.
I read a book by Margaret Mahy once, I think it was “The Changeover”, that was clearly set in Christchurch, New Zealand, even though the city was never specifically named. This is because the author lives near there.
I’m not from Christchurch, I’m from Dunedin, but it’s close enough.
Also, another New Zealand classic teen novel set in Auckland is “Under The Mountain” which mentions not just suburbs and streets, but specific houses that actually exist. My brother in law’s family live there, right across the lake from the Wilberforce House, and when they made the TV series of it, they used the actual buildings as described in the book as locations so said BIL and family got to see it get made.
There’s one book that was written many years back named after the town I live in. It was pretty good, attempting to do a kind of gen-x teen thing. For the most part, he did well with geography, but there were certain things that didn’t make sense. You could tell he was looking at a map of the town instead of actually being here.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius takes place, in part, in the Chicago area. Great book.
Well, I grew up in Waukegan and Gurnee, so any of Bradbury’s Greentown stories count, especially Dandelion Wine. Also I went to highschool with the author of this book, American Skin, a fictionalized autobiographical coming of age kinda thing, which opened up in our school, so bits happened literally within a few hundred feet of where I was at the time. He was kind of an asshat, though, and I’m glad I almost ran him over with my 10 speed.
Kim Harrison’s Rachel Morgan series is based in Cincinnati and Covington. That was actually why I picked the first one (Dead Witch Walking)up.
Tom Robbins’s “Another Roadside Attraction” is set in Skagit Valley, in the Northwest of Washington State, where I grew up.
Purtiest part of the country, YMMV, and I can’t wait to move back there.
I recently read that book and was really taken with it!
Judith Guest wrote a recent murder mystery, The Tarnished Eye, that takes place in Ann Arbor and a vacation community on Lake Michigan. Loosely based on true events.
Susan Holtzer writes murder mysteries that take place in my town. The detective’s office is written as being 1/2 block from my office; always get a kick out of knowing exactly what the author is describing.
Neil Gaimen’s American Gods has some parts set in southern Wisconsin and Illinois, and since they’re mostly travelling parts, and I drive to and from from Illinois to Minnesota along 90/94 quite a lot, I enjoyed noticing landmarks. Gaimen has a home in Wisconsin somewhere (I met someone who said that he frequented the coffee shop where she worked. Gossip: he likes vegetarian chili.), so he was pretty accurate.
ZJ
The only one I can think of offhand that I can actually recommend is Inamorata by Joseph Gangemi – and that’s set in the '20s, so I’m not sure it counts. It’s about a scientific examination of a medium; the naive young man sent by the “Scientific American” investigators falls for the lovely young doctor’s wife in question. Good read, aside from nice Philly details.
I just finished re-reading Thom Wolfe’s A Man in Full, set in the city of Atlanta GA. In chapter 9, The Lay of the Land the Mayor of Atlanta gives a tour of the city to an old friend, all the while talking about how the geography of Atlanta gives a clue as to its power structure. He starts in the heights of Buckhead and stops right south of Auburn (GA), and with the exception of a couple of fictitious addresses, he gets it dead on.
White Fang by Jack London (as well as a number of his other books) was set in Juneau and Skagway, AK. I grew up in Haines (in between Skagway and Juneau on the Lynn Canal).
O/T - The movie of the same name was filmed in my hometown in '91. Ethan Hawke was the star and I know many of the extras in the movie. My dad even got some camera time!