A Murder and a Metaphor: Litkicks Mystery Spot #1

To Kill a Mockingbird? My first instinct was Of Mice and Men, but I'll go with Harper Lee instead.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? Is this an aerial of the Mississippi River?

This would be the wasteland mentioned in The Great Gatsby, right? The road is on Long Island and connects Manhattan with East Egg/West Egg. The death came by car accident at the fork in the road.

Well, my guess would either be the Da Vinci Code, or Oedipus the King. Just due to Oedipus's father being murdered where two roads meet.

a separate peace?

The novel : The Great Gatsby.

The fork in the road is where Daisy killed Myrtle with Gatsby's roadster.

It's gotta be The Great Gatsby.

The Great Gatsby - this is the Valley of Ashes (Flushing Meadow)

The Great Gatsby

Long Island? The Valley of Ashes? Anybody? Anybody? Gatsby?

Could it be from "The Quiet American"

That's the only book from which a murder by a river is coming to me.

To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

It's where Boo Radley kills Bob Ewell! I treasure that book -- every sweet word...

...or maybe Of Mice And Men, by John Steinbeck? Nahhh... that's not a LOVED novel, as you hinted.

the great gatsby? (when myrtle runs out to the car?)

The Great Gatsby - "the Valley of Ashes," site of Myrtle's death

The Grapes of Wrath

Fun idea! Is it The Great Gatsby? And this is the Valley of Ashes and the road where Myrtle was killed?

The Great Gatsby

It's got to be Gatsby, doesn't it? Love the shot - it's beautiful in it's own right. Thanks!

I'm guessing The Great Gatsby

North by Northwest

This is the Valley of Ashes, from The Great Gatsby, later the site of the New York World's Fair in 1964. I can't claim to be a literary genius, just good at using Google, with search terms like "aerial photo 1924".

Aha! A little research pays off. This is where Myrtle was run down in The Great Gatsby! Great idea; please continue. :)

I'm guessing the great gatsby...

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. It's Monroeville, Ala., standing in for the fictional Maycomb, Ala.

It's the Great Gatsby!

The Great Gatsby??

That's the Valley of Ashes (now Flushing Meadows Corona Park), from The Great Gatsby. The road is where Myrtle Wilson was killed by the car driven by Daisy Buchanan.

I quickly thought of "The Great Gatsby" because everyone reads it in high school, it's from the 1920s, and the landscape looks urban, with Long Island coming into thought and Google Maps. The streets in the photo and the rail line remain recognizeable, with the Corona neighborhood on the left (west). Northern parts of the stream remain roughly the same, but the great ash pile was transmogrified into the site for two Worlds Fairs, tennis, and lately the new Mets field, the Jets having fled.

Death of Myrtle in East Egg, The Great Gatsby

Of Mice & Men?

I am guessing OF MICE AND MEN.

Is it "The Great Gatsby"? I was going to guess when Myrtle is killed by a car on a fictional Long Island, but wasn't that an accident -- not really a murder? Also, you chose a photo from 1924, and the novel was published in 1925. The metaphor was the ashy wasteland, no? Just a guess, but a great post. Very intriguing!

Great Gatsby??

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Great Gatsby; crash site in Flushing Meadows

It's the "valley of ashes . . . bounded on one side by a small foul river . . . a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens," from The Great Gatsby.

The "work of geometric modern art," sort of/kind of resembles the chick/face thing on the original 1925 cover, but maybe i just pulled that one out of my ass.

I had a pretty strong suspicion this was the answer, but I had to do some snooping to confirm:

http://hyperakt.com/play/?p=1612

Thank god i figured it out...it's 2:30AM in Ky and i can finally get some sleep

Very nice. I'm definitely bookmarking to see your explanation

Could this be the Valley of Ashes in The Great Gatsby and the road where Myrtle Wilson is run over by Gatsby's car, driven by Daisy?

Of Mice and Men?

From the Great Gatsby - where Daisy hit Myrtle. "About halfway between West Egg and New York." I hope I'm right. I love that novel dearly and actually wrote a poem about it:

Gatsby

Gatsby's green light conviction—
an enviable certainty
in life's lovesick morass

but it led only to death
with thin dreams
still attached
to a reckless, shirt-sobbing sophisticate

On what path does that leave the rest of us?
Somewhere in between
certainty and death
myopia and omniscience—
life more grey then green—

at least he had a cause, a purpose, a plan—
tainted, hued, and ultimately unattainable,
but a purpose all-encompassing
& his restless, running mind
was clouded not by love’s whos or whys
but by love’s hows—
void of cynicism
and second guess

yet this conviction
is what killed him—
passions tempered,
lesson learned

unless —

unless it’s just the tragedy
of trust in the untrustworthy
& what to take away is this:
Wisely choose your Daisy
then
believe and make it be

The Great Gatsby.

The expanse is the valley of ashes, the desolate expanse between West Egg and New York City in which garageman George Wilson resides with his wife Myrtle (Tom's mistress). Myrtle is later hit by a car and killed, presumably on the stretch of road you've described.

The river pictured is the Flushing River; the large building near the fork in the road appears to resemble the Zucker-Levett chemical factory in an 1891 map found on Wikipedia's entry of Flushing, NY. This area is now Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

That's got to be The Great Gatsby, right?

The Hound of the Baskervilles.
the English moors.

Of Mice and Men.

I'm guessing that's probably the Salinas river in the picture, though current maps don't show any rail lines crossing over the Salinas or any tributaries like the way that picture indicates.

great gatsby?

"The Great Gatsby."

My only guess is "The Great Gatsby".

Slaughterhouse Five?

The Great Gatsby
On the trip back to East Egg, Gatsby allows Daisy to drive in order to calm her ragged nerves. Passing Wilson's garage, Daisy swerves to avoid another car and ends up hitting Myrtle; she is killed instantly. Nick advises Gatsby to leave town until the situation calms. Gatsby, however, refuses to leave: he remains in order to ensure that Daisy is safe. George Wilson, driven nearly mad by the death of his wife, is desperate to find her killer. Tom Buchanan tells him that Gatsby was the driver of the fatal car. Wilson, who has decided that the driver of the car must also have been Myrtle's lover, shoots Gatsby before committing suicide himself.

The Great Gatsby!

I think this place is the valley of the ashes, From The Great Gatsby, where he kills the woman with his car, under the "eyes" of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg.

The intersection where Mrytle Wilson was struck and killed by Daisy Buchanan while driving Gatsby's car (with Gatsby in the passenger seat) in the The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Long Island. Great Gatsby.

Corona, The Valley of Ashes, The Great Gatsby, the archetype for all subsequent suburban dramas of the New York Metropolitan area: Revolutionary Road, The Ice Storm, Michael Clayton, etc...

Cheers from NYC

Ti Kill A Mockingbird

The Great Gatsby...?

My guess - The Great Gatsby.

Let's go with Gatsby.

Readers -- I am so impressed that, as of Friday morning, there are 148 comments and 104 of you guessed it right! The answer, if you haven't gathered by now, is "The Great Gatsby" and a detailed explanation is here.

Looks like it's in California's San Joaquin Valley. Based on the dried out hillsides, square plots of lands the houses sit on, and the curling bends of river. But as to which murder or book? No idea.

I think it looks like Baghdad and the Tigris river, but I have no idea what novel you're referring to, although I'll be interested to find out.

I say Gatsby.

Wow! Did someone finally find the rabbit hole from Alice in Wonderland?

Another guess for Gatsby. This is fun! More, more!

I changed my mind. I actually think Tom Murphy had it right with "Slaughterhouse-Five." This looks like the planet Tralfamadore to me now -- just before the aliens beamed up Robert Moses.

Dang, everybody already guessed Myrtle's murder in The Great Gatsby.

I also think The Great Gatsby. I believe more people have read that book than The Grapes of Wrath.

Valley of Ashes a.k.a. Flushing Meadow, Queens. The north-south road running along the right edge of the photo would be College Point Blvd. The horizontal black line in the center is the L.I. railroad. The east-west road you see in the upper left corner is a cut-off section of Northern Blvd. (Rte. 25A), which in those days would have been the main thoroughfare that connected West Egg (Great Neck) with Manhattan. The section of ash just south of Northern Blvd. that looks like a half-opened fan is the present-day location of Citi Field/Shea Stadium, home of the N.Y. Mets.

I'm guessing The Great Gatsby. If J. G. Ballard was alive, he'd know!

Didn't guess it first, but it is definitley Flushing meadow park area with 7 train running across the middle. Was the ash dump in Gatsby.

I could be wrong, but I don't think that it is the 7 train, which runs along Roosevelt Ave and in 1924 hadn't yet been extended to Willets Point & Main St. I read somewhere that the Roosevelt Ave bridge (over Flushing Creek) was built between 1925-1927. I think that the (white) road you see just north of the railroad (that does not quite extend to Flushing Creek) is Roosevelt Ave. The (black) rail line you see in middle of the picture must be the L.I.R.R., which you will see on a map today if you Mapquest it. The only difference with the railroad is that back then it bridged Flushing Creek, whereas today I believe that it runs past a section of the creek that was filled in (hence no more bridge).