Carrie Pruet
> Mark wrote:
>
> <<. I'd be curious if there are crime novels
that make
> >strong use of a city's geography to guide plot
>>
>
> Lehane's "Mystic River," though strictly speaking
dealing with an
"invented"
> neighborhood is very much about the tension between
old and new in a
> changing city. I don't see this much in his other
books, except "A drink
> before the war," where Patrick's crossing into
Roxbury (the "black"
Boston,
> at least as laid out in the book) has a lot of
significance to the racial
> geography and tensions in the story.
>
Carrie, Lehane would be a bad example of an author who has
the geography guide the plot as he may change the geography
to fit his purposes. Thst is why he felt he had to invent
Mystic River so he could have the town's layout just as he
pleased with no concern for the geographic constraints. In
his Boston places are where they should be in his mind and
not necessarily where they actually are.
Indeed, Roxbury is now considered the center of 'Black
Boston', but the borders between it and Dorchester, which
Lehane writes of, are not distinct. It's the people not the
geography that would most who most determine where you are.
Mark.
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