One thing that I find interesting about L.A. is Robert B.
Parker's obvious interest in the city although he doesn't
actually set anything there. Parker lives in the Boston area
of course, and sets his stuff there, although Spenser tends
to fly around a lot, especially in the later books.
However, I can think of at least four trips to L.A. he's
made, starting in *A Savage Place,* one of the last readable
Spenser novels. There was no real reason why the story had to
be set there that I can think of--it involved the movie
industry, but could just as easily have involved banking or
something else. Also, Jesse Stone, his new(er) police chief
hero, hails from L.A. but now lives in Northern Mass.
Is L.A. the hard-boiled Mecca?
I once started a paper called "From L.A. to LA: Place in
Hard-Boiled Fiction" that was going to center on Chandler and
James Lee Burke. Unfortunately, the prospectus was shot down
by my professor--it was a southern literature class, and he
didn't buy my "but it's southern California!" argument.
G.
===== George C. Upper III, Editor The Lightning Bell Poetry
Journal http://www.lightningbell.org/
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