Monday, April 27, 2009

Prison Break!

I fell off the blog wagon again. I have made some progress on some fiction (more on that in a different post), and wasn't too inspired to write about the latest books I've been reading.

I'm on the road, and yesterday I was at the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. It is an influential and now derelict prison that was open from the 1810s to 1971. I have a couple story ideas percolating, using the place as a setting. But now I'm wondering, what good crime novels (or stories) have been set in prisons. I never read Shawshank Redemption. Edward Bunker's No Beast So Fierce discusses prison life, but most of the novel takes place on the outside. A good portion of Highsmith's The Glass Cell is set in prison. I'll have to figure out what else.