Hope you enjoy them.

I've recently become interested in a mystery series set in late 19th C Istanbul

Title and author please!!! Pretty, pretty please . . .

I do like books set in locations that are underused. I’ve recently become interested in a mystery series set in late 19th C Istanbul, and I loved the first half of Laura Kinsale’s The Dream Hunter. Sherry Thomas’ latest book and Meredith Duran’s first also benefited from their settings.

*best example ever: the chase scene in No Way Out. Watch with a DC native sometime, but brace yourself for hysterical laughter.

The infamous roll down into what should be the Potomac and then escape via the non-existent Georgetown Metro stop? LOL!!!

San Francisco gets this treatment too (I'm sure most locals do). There's a car chase in The Rock that slays me (he's in Russian Hill, he cuts through a garage, and bursts out in the Avenues. It was a real WTF moment for the locals (not to mention the bizarre fountain and flowers at the Palace of Fine Arts; guess the lake and swans and amazing ruins from the World Fair just weren't enough).

I tend to avoid books set in San Francisco (or other places I know well). For example, I've never been able to get past the opening paragraph of Blood Sucking Fiends. The second sentence begins: A low fog worked its way up from the bay . . . Um, no it didn't. The fog rolls in off the ocean, over Twin Peaks, across the city and out onto the bay. I love Moore's books, but that line just stopped me in my tracks.

In Christine Feehan's “Dark Magic,” Feehan describes the hero and heroine eating “baguettes” at the Cafe du Monde. It's obvious Feehan never visited Cafe du Monde, much less tasted a beignet.

Are you effing kidding me? *jaw hanging open* This is something that an editor should have caught at the very least. *sigh*

Like others I’m tired of books in NYC and New Orleans. I do like Chicago as a setting though. Don’t know why, never been there.

Heather

Meagan McKinney, who lived (and for all I know may still live) in New Orleans, wrote one of my favorite romantic suspense novels, A Man to Slay Dragons, which is set there. Now I have never been to New Orleans myself, but I always feel as though I’m there when I read that novel. And Anne Rice is probably the only other writer who has made me feel that way about that setting. Oh, and the McKinney book has a great scene that takes place in Cafe du Monde and involves beignets.

And then there was the time I nearly fell off my bed, I was laughing so hard. In another book she had the police making a call to a very upscale neighborhood in a locale that I happen to know firsthand consists of mobile home parks, a K-Mart, and a water park.

And in yet another book, she had someone in California getting a divorce in 6 weeks, from filing to finalized. Uh… no. 6 months minimum from when the court accepts your paperwork. That book also had it snowing in the Napa Valley. Huh??

Yes, Nora can still tell great stories… but I have just a bit less respect for her because of her sloppy research.

I get a giddy thrill when places I know well are described well. There’s a section of The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud that takes place in Amherst, MA, in the early aughts, which is around when I lived there also. One of the characters gets a job at a bar I used to frequent (which sadly no longer exists) and those scenes made me so nostalgic!

I live in New York City now, so I’m crazy biased, but setting a novel in New York increases the odds I’ll buy it. But only when done right. Setting, when done wrong, is really irritating. The first chapter of Stephen King’s The Dark Half is set in my tiny hometown in NJ, and it’s clear he just threw a dart at a map and then made up the rest, as none of the setting details are in any way accurate. Similarly, I read a novel recently that was set in New York, and so, so much of it was wrong, especially the geography (the author kept referring to the place the protagonist was staying as “Greenwich” and it took me a couple of chapters to figure out that she meant Greenwich Village and not Greenwich, CT; the tip off was that the protagonist kept tripping over “bohemians” on the street). Mistakes like that will pull me right out of the story.

I did appreciate one thriller in DC (I think it might have been The Jackal?) where while they didn’t get the shape of the tile in the Metro stations right, they did get the color right. Everything else was wrong about the station, but they at least got that. Heh.

(When I'm not yelling, “OH I WISH I FREAKING WISH” at the screen, or the page.)

Ever since I moved here, I have wished for the magic cars that Mulder and Scully had that would get them from Alexandria to Silver Spring in 15 minutes.

Which is understandable, why take a shoot to TX if you don’t have to? But couldn’t they have TRIED, just for the authenticity’s sake, to make their scenes look like they took place in flat flat flat flat flat west Texas?

Other times, authors do a good job of researching an area, and attempting to insert local flavor, but it doesn’t have a feeling of authenticity for me. For instance, when I was in middle school, I read every Phyllis A. Whitney book. For each book she thoroughly researched a different locale. So, every novel was like a tourist trip through the area. But, one can never really EXPERIENCE a place as a tourist. I’d rather be a resident, and REALLY understand the area.

That’s why I would prefer writer’s to write what they know. Research is great, but it’s no substitute for life experience.

I am originally from Madison, WI and one of Marjorie Liu’s books mentions Madison and it made me fall in love with the book, or at least love it much more due to this fact.

i suppose because I am not from LA, New York or Chicago – I love reading books that are set in places I’ve lived.

I dont particularly mind locations. But occasionally they grate, I'm getting annoyed with the Southern Vampire series, Sookie's almost condescension for anyone that prefers a city.

Well, in my personal experience, Sookie’s attitude is very in tone with reality.

I once stayed with some in-laws in Alexandria, LA. I truly felt like I was in an entirely different world of consciousness. My husband’s relatives were all very gracious, down-to-earth folk. They fed us like crazy: homemade preserves, barbecue brisket, big southern country breakfasts.

But they clearly didn’t understand city life. They laughed at me for locking my car doors when I unloaded my luggage. My husband’s great-aunt asked me plainly, “Who d’you think’s gonna get in your car?” (They lived WAY out in the boonies, and for sure there was no one around for miles.)

These are people who sleep with their windows open if they feel like it. They feel very free and in control of their surroundings.

So, when I read Sookie, I always smile, because really, the author “nailed” that mindset.

I can think of any of a dozen movies or television shows that try to squish the laws of physics like that — shows set in NYC, Boston, Atlanta, DC, Chicago, and on and on. Now I mostly eyeroll, and only DNF if it’s the straw on the long-suffering camel’s back. (When I’m not yelling, “OH I WISH I FREAKING WISH” at the screen, or the page.)

What I do enjoy, though, is when you get a nod. It’s like an homage, but far more subtle; it’s an in-joke that only natives might get but doesn’t parade itself so noisily that non-natives can tell they’re being left out. Like the directions Holly Hunter’s character gives the cabbies in Broadcast News: so incredibly bassackwards, crazy, turned-around, that the cabbie’s wide-eyed disbelieving stare matches any DC native’s response. To a non-native, it just sounds funny because it’s obviously convoluted; it doesn’t render the joke unfunny if you’re not aware that half her directions involve going the wrong way down one-way streets.

When textual, it’s usually a throwaway line, and often pivots on a local name or turn of phrase, like Uptown in NYC, or that DC’ers say “going into town” and not “going into the city”. If the author gets that little nod right, the natives will be doing a little dance of glee. If the author misses it or gets it wrong, well, only the natives will be getting restless, really. No one else is even gonna notice. If I get one or two nods that tells me the author at least did some native-person research, and then I’m more likely to dismiss any discrepancies as purposeful, and thus forgivable.

Come to think of it, two or three well-done nods and I’m likely to enjoy the story even more (at least for its locale) because now I’m feeling comfy that the author knows the city well enough to tweak its nose with a few details. If the author then tells me it’s only five minutes on a Friday afternoon to get from Arlington to the Pentagon via the 110, that’s not a reason to fuss. It’s now a reason to smile and enjoy the sense that the author is sharing a joke with me that no one else would get.

But when the author gets it wrong, ooph, that really can take me out of the story and make me wonder what else she/he got wrong.

I love New Orleans done well. I loathe New Orleans done badly.

In Christine Feehan's “Dark Magic,” Feehan describes the hero and heroine eating “baguettes” at the Cafe du Monde. It's obvious Feehan never visited Cafe du Monde, much less tasted a beignet.

Heh. I haven’t read that book, but I agree on New Orleans.

It’s a popular setting and normally I would seek books out with a place I love, but so many authors either have never been there or just get a lot wrong. I’ve also read many books with “Cajun” characters and it’s obvious that the author really hasn’t known many Cajuns, if any. They tend to overdo it.

The only locale that might turn me off is NYC, just because it’s been done to death and every heroine feels like a retread of Carrie Bradshaw. Is there a young woman in NYC who isn’t obsessed with shoes and shopping? If so, you wouldn’t know it from reading romance novels.