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Originally Posted by lio45
The plot (unless I'm wrong... haven't read that novel) could likely be basically the same somewhere else... Edinburgh as the setting, or not, is likely not a deal-breaker.
Sure, it's nice that it's set there, and certainly a better story to an extent than in a less appropriate location, but the main plot line -- which IMO is what makes a story good; the details, etc. are more like toppings, they will make a good story better, but won't turn a bad one into a good one -- could likely be very similar; the plot likely does not demand Edinburgh.
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Actually, pretty much all of Rankin's novels demand their setting, which is what makes them so irresistible. They would not have the atmosphere, nor the ties to history and sheer...
place if they were set elsewhere. Good stories are inextricably woven into the places they're told. Generic stories are the only stories that can move from place to place.
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Could be set in many other American cities.
Or, with minor alterations, the same plot line could be set in Mexico City, Johannesburg, etc.
If the writer's good, and the story's good, then it will be basically just as good if you swap Detroit for the worst areas of Cleveland or St. Louis with the exact same intrigue... and it will still be a very enjoyable high-quality story.
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Ah, but a story that requires that
Detroit quality of Detroit might indeed work in Cleveland or St. Louis, or Buffalo... But it wouldn't work in someplace flush with cash like San Francisco or Seattle. Again, the best stories are the stories that can't be told anywhere but where they are. There are ways people behave, ways people think, things people do, even certain kinds of weather they have to watch out for, that just can't be transplanted wholesale to another location.
Let me give you an example. Let's say you off someone, take them to a school book warehouse and dump them in a pit that has opened up in the floor, such that only their feet are sticking up from a pool of hard-frozen water, amid thousands of scattered, rotting, frozen textbooks. That scene takes on so many more layers of meaning in Detroit -- as a metaphor for American failings, social failings, and what have you, than it would elsewhere -- where you probably wouldn't even have that kind of setting to use anyway. Likewise, the Katrina ruins of New Orleans lend themselves to settings that you just will not find on Long Island (although you could potentially come close nearby in Asbury Park, NJ). Likewise, it's harder to lose yourself in a smaller city, so someone looking to hide what they've done in a smaller place has a harder, meaner time of it than they would in a big city. It adds to the intrigue.
My point is that New York stories are great, but I prefer stories told elsewhere that make best use of those other places. I have plenty of novels, and watch plenty of shows, set in New York, but the stories I crave take place somewhere else and could not take place in New York even if you tried to force it.
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