The geography of crime novels

[David Morris]

I agree.  NYC isn’t all 5th Ave.  And Brooklyn has always been a bit exotic.

DM

On Thu, Oct 21, 2021 at 7:33 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> I find the Pynchon’s interest in the regions of NYC more compelling than
> that, but  definitely without the social and character variations they
> would lose their color and meaning. There’s a big tension between what was,
> the older businesses and neighborhoods and the adaptive creative bar and
> underground social scene, with it’s local color and character on one end of
> the spectrum and what is coming from new money, expensive hip anonymous
> modernist or franchised, safe, sterile. The change and desires that shape
> this NYC are everywhere and souped up on new markets created by computer
> tech married to older real estate based greed.  This war zone is in every
> big city and I think TP uses the geographic landscape to amplify the scale
> and direction of the underlying conflicts.
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Oct 21, 2021, at 6:11 PM, Mike Weaver <mike.weaver at zen.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> > Been there. Great book.
> >
> > But New York is the US city I'm least interested in exploring - read
> plenty of books set there but the city itself holds no allure, maybe
> because it comes across as all city, and flat. Same with Chicago. LA set
> stories range out into the wilds of mountain and desert, it has hills
> within.   Reading Bleeding Edge at the moment, it's all the characters that
> keep me reading - the geography doesn't grab me at all, up, the street,
> down the street, what's it matter, it's the interactions which drive it
> along not where they take place.
> >
> > On 21/10/2021 21:33, David Morris wrote:
> >>
> >> No subscription needed link:ink P uses the
> >>
> https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/10/17/reviews/991017.17mobilot.html?_r=2
> <
> https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/10/17/reviews/991017.17mobilot.html?_r=2
> >
> >>
> >> What Makes Him Tic?
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >> /The young narrator of this post-modern detective novel suffers from
> Tourette's syndrome./
> >> /
> >> /
> >> /
> >>
> >>      <
> http://barnesandnoble.bfast.com/booklink/click?sourceid=4773&ISBN=0385491832
> >
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >> *MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN
> >> *By Jonathan Lethem.
> >> 311 pp. New York:
> >> Doubleday. <mike.weaver at zen.co.uk <mailto:mike.weaver at zen.co.uk>>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> /
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>    Apart from being a lazy reader and crime novels being little
> >>    strain on
> >>    the brain, one reason I enjoy stories set in the US is exploring
> >>    different parts of the country which has fascinated me since I
> >>    discovered DC comics in the late 1950s and watched the Lone Ranger
> >>    and
> >>    Range Rider on the tube.
> >>
> >>    Having realised that Land's End is the nearest I'm likely to get
> >>    to the
> >>    US, earlier in the year I decided to explore it by crime novels,
> >>    starting with LA. With a list of lesser known LA based series,
> >>    reading
> >>    mostly using the Internet Archive Library I had Wiki and Google
> >>    Maps/Streetview open and gradually got the layout and look of LA
> >>    sorted
> >>    in my head.
> >>
> >>    I can't say I discovered any great prose or notable story telling but
> >>    two authors I'd recommend as a result are Barbara Serranella and
> >>    Timothy
> >>    Hallinan. Street life stories from the former and crim world
> >>    comedy from
> >>    the latter - a burglar who does PI jobs for those who can't go to the
> >>    police, i.e. other criminals - good fun. I read several
> >>    African-American
> >>    writers, which was good for social-economic perspectives but none as
> >>    writers or storytellers a patch on Walter Mosley.
> >>
> >>    So where next...
> >>
> >>    On 21/10/2021 17:14, Mark Kohut wrote:
> >>    >
> >>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/21/books/classic-crime-novels-that-still-thrill-today.html
> >>    <
> https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/21/books/classic-crime-novels-that-still-thrill-today.html
> >
> >>    > --
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> >>
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