Where It All Goes Down
Jerusalem's Lot, Maine, 1975
Like the title says, the setting of 'Salem's Lot is the town, Jerusalem's Lot. From the library to the garbage dump, from the boarding house to the police station, from the church to the evil Marsten House on the hill, and from the forest in the northwest to the farms in the southeast, the novel walks up and down Jerusalem's Lot, biting in where it will.
The more you bite in, though, the more you realize that Jerusalem's Lot is… familiar. Walking through the Lot is like walking through every TV small town ever. You've got mean loser hillbillies; you've got the slow-talking but smart sheriff; you've got the town gossip; you've even got a drunken Irish priest.
Okay, so there's something satisfying about seeing the stereotypical boring town systematically defiled. That Irish priest is forced to drink vampire blood rather than alcohol; the wily lawman is bled white by his car; the vapid small-town beauty Susan Norton is turned into a fanged terror of the night; and the sleepy community, with its second-hand drama, is transformed into a bleak ghost-haunted terror.
The novel gleefully spits on all the clichés: Jerusalem's Lot isn't so much a setting as a parody of a setting; a familiar façade that you, and the vampires, get to knock down.