Just Plain Murder (2018) by Laura Bradford

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Just Plain Murder (2018)

by Laura Bradford

Paradise, Pennsylvania 

Pennsylvania: 4/27

   Editor Susan Straight loves herself a regional detective novel, so I wasn't surprised that "Amish Country" is represented in the 1,001 Novels project by, yes, you guessed it, a detective novel set in Amish country.  Straight calls this "an engrossing debut" in her map copy but this was honestly one of my least favorite books in the entire 1,001 Novels project.  The narrator is not the detective himself but rather his girlfriend, a thirty-something who has retreated to Amish country to run a small tchotchke store after her marriage in New York City broke up.   There is less action in Just Plain Murder than your average coming of age book about an underprivileged girl growing up in the urban Northeast- and fewer murders.  When the mystery is finally solved, the reader is likely to be struck by the over-all weakness of the entire book. And so much talk about this sad ladies feelings. 

Old School (2003) by Tobias Wolff

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Old School (2003)

by Tobias Wolff

Pottstown, Pennsylvania 

Pennsylvania: 3/27

   The way the Pennsylvania picks for the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America are arranged geographically, there is a heavy concentration inside the triangle of Philadelphia, Lancaster and Allentown, weighted towards Philly.  There's are no picks from the entire Northwest quadrant of the state, and then a smattering of titles between Philly and Pittsburgh.   Old School, set at a prep school, is located smack in the center of the eastern triangle of titles and it is also notable because Tobias Wolff, is, astonishingly, the first author to be selected twice in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of American project.  Wolff, of course, is already in the 1,001 Novels project representing New Jersey with another school (university) set title, The Final Club.

   I actually enjoyed Old School- I picked it out because it was available as an Audiobook selection- because it involves real life authors visiting this fictious school and thus engages with popular-American literary culture circa the late 1950's early 1960's, as witnessed by a student at the school- the narrator.  The Final Club (1990) and this book were written a decade apart.  If you look at his Amazon Author page, this book is his third top title and The Final Club is out of print, so.  

   I really liked reading/hearing about Ayn Rand and Hemingway as characters, and the thoughts that these characters had about them, although there is nothing ground-breaking as far as actual insight goes, it makes the prep-school centered plot less insufferable than it would have otherwise been (see my review of The Final Club.)