The Plot Thickens

Everyone knows Fairfield County has been home to famous writers. The list runs the gamut from Mark Twain (Redding) to Erica Jong (Weston), Howard Fast (Greenwich and Redding) to Keith Richards (the best-selling memoirist and, oh yeah, Rolling Stone, who lives in Weston).

But how many novelists have set their novels in Fairfield County? And dared to name their towns?

A quick survey by Patch turned up quite a few (with helpful jump-starts by Westport Public Library’s Marta Campbell and Darien Public Library’s Jennifer Dayton). Here’s the beginning of a list (help us round it out in the comments section below!):

• The prolific left-leaning Howard Fast, who was blacklisted in the '50s, set his last novel with social and political themes in Greenwich, which was his last home, in 2000. He called it Greenwich so there would be no mistaking the context.

• Sloan Wilson’s 1955 best-seller, "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit," is set in Southport. (It became a popular film a year later, starring Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones.) It was a ground-breaking look at conformity in corporate suites.
• Ira Levin set "The Stepford Wives" in fictional Stepford, Connecticut, in 1972, but he later revealed he based the town of Stepford on Wilton, where he had lived in the 1960s. The satirical thriller novel was adapted in two movies, starring successively Katharine Ross (with scenes filmed at Goodwives Shopping Center in Darien) and Nicole Kidman (with scenes filmed at Lockwood Mathews Mansion Museum in Norwalk). The term “Stepford wife” has entered the cultural lexicon as a reference to the transformation of a go-getter, independent-minded woman to a submissive and docile wife, swallowed up by suburban sterility.
• "The Winthrop Woman" is Anya Seton’s 1958 historical novel about Elizabeth Fones, daughter-in-law of John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. The plot takes its characters to colonial New England locations, including Greenwich.
• Max Shulman’s 1958 "Rally Round the Flag, Boys!" is set in fictional Putnam’s Landing, Connecticut, a community with real spirit and interesting people – writers, artists, actors, ad men, TV executives “and other such animated types"– that comes off suspiciously like Westport, which is where Shulman lived in the 1950s when he wrote the book about Cold War era paranoia. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward starred in the film adaptation.
• "Revolutionary Road" is the acclaimed first novel of Richard Yates set in a fictional Fairfield County suburb in 1955 and published in 1961. When Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio starred in the film version in 2008, some scenes were shot in Darien. The plot follows a young couple mired in a suburban rut, longing to cut loose.
• Laura J. Hobson’s "Gentleman’s Agreement" is a stinging 1947 look at anti-Semitism in an affluent New York suburb. Hobson named the name – Darien – and has not been forgiven by town fathers in the intervening 64 years. What was worse, a film version starring Gregory Peck was nominated for an Oscar.
• New York Times best-selling author Peter Straub moved to Westport after living in Dublin and London and that’s where he set his 1982 novel "Floating Dragon," a thriller, set in the fictional, but very Westport-like, Hampstead.
• "Reckless" is the 2010 murder-mystery by Andrew Gross that’s set in Greenwich and made it to the New York Times Bestsellers list. It’s a financial world whodunit that takes off with the murder of a trader at a major brokerage and the murder's  immediate effect on world financial markets. Gross penned "The Dark Tide" in 2008, another of his gripping thrillers is ripe with Greenwich and Stamford references and landmarks.
• Speaking of bestsellers, mystery doyenne Mary Higgins Clark has ties to Fairfield County, especially Greenwich. Her "We'll Meet Again" (1999) was set in Greenwich and is filled with references to familiar landmarks in town.
• Author DJ MacHale has described his 2010 novel "Morpheus Road" as being based upon his life in his hometown of Greenwich even though the town is called Stony Brook.
• Greenwich resident Lee Whitnum, who uses the pen name Lee Roystone, used her hometown as the backdrop for her romance novel "Hedge Fund Mistress" about a decade ago.
• Cathleen Schine, who grew up in Westport, has set two novels in the town she knows best: "The Love Letter" (2007) and "Three Weissmans of Westport" (2010).
• Recently, Tom Seligson, a TV producer from Westport, set his 2011 thriller, "King of Hearts," about the true-life spectacular bank heist in Iraq in 2003, in, of all places, Westport, CT.

- Local editor Barbara Heins contributed to this report.