A few observations about Boston:
1) I've lived
in the area, counting academic years during law school, since
the fall of 1970. When I arrived, it was a very provincial
city, with very few non-white faces ever seen outside the
respective neighborhoods where given racial groups lived.
Court-ordered busing in the 1970's tore the fabric of the
city, and its public school system, which was run by an
incompetent aggregation of political hacks. However, the
image of black children ducking in school buses as white
parents threw rocks at their windows has taken a long time to
get over, and there still are pockets of blocks in some
neighborhoods where the race of a visitor would be an
issue.
2) Today,
though, many of the formerly "white-only" neighborhoods have
racial mix beyond tokenism, and certainly the "desirable"
neighborhoods of Beacon Hill, the Waterfront, Back Bay (where
I live), etc. have become fully integrated, and not just by
the influx of African-Americans. For all its other problems,
Boston University may claim credit on this issue, as it has
attracted many students of color from overseas to its
undergraduate program.
3) I also
think the trick to writing crime novels about Boston is to
focus on this transition and the ripple effect that
"multiculture" is having on the traditions of the city.
Frankly, it's now a very comfortable, and safe, European-like
city in many ways for most citizens, but even more fertile
ground for complex, hard-boiled antagonists [see my Latina
street gang Las Hermanas in FOURSOME, the Amer-Asian loan
sharks from Saigon in THE ONLY GOOD LAWYER, etc).
Best,
Jerry
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