One of Ashby's five top books set in company towns, as shared at Tor.com:StardustRead about the other entries on the list.
Similarly, I think you can also read Stardust by Joseph Kanon as a company town novel. It takes place in Hollywood after the Second World War. The main character is a war reporter looking to find a producer and director who will edit his footage of concentration camps being liberated into a film for mainstream audiences. (This was partially inspired by Hitchcock’s lost Holocaust documentary.) Then his brother dies, and he has to solve the murder. The book has everything: murder, fifth columnists, secrets, sex, lies. What makes it a company town novel is the insular quality of Hollywood at the time—it takes place only thirty years after Hollywood merged into L.A., and before L.A. had swallowed over eighty separate districts into in what is now the Greater Los Angeles Area.
--Marshal Zeringue
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