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It was a bad day for Meg Daniels.

She had just had her vacation in Ocean City interrupted by a dead body. Her boss's dead body to be exact.

Daniels had to identify the remains, dumped in the tall marsh grass near her rundown oceanfront bungalow. And to make things worse, she had a splitting headache from one too many strawberry daquiris.

Respite was in order.

"I needed comfort. To me the best comfort food in Ocean City was available at Bob's at 14th and boardwalk. I headed in that direction through dwindling throngs, but still throngs, of vacationers. As I hit the boardwalk, a wave of nostalgia washed over me. I had forgotten the sound of shoes on the boardwalk - a constant patter with no real rhythm."

As White savored a cheeseburger with raw onion and a side of french fries at Bob's, readers following the heroine's journey in Jane Kelly's "Killing Time in Ocean City" find themselves remembering their own trips to the southern New Jersey shore, where they walked the boardwalk, stuffed their pockets with ride tickets for Gillian's Wonderland Pier and indulged in their own burgers at Bob's.

It's never a surprise to recognize towns, streets and famous people when flipping through a non fiction book on New Jersey history. But in fiction, when an author can set a character's romance or crime spree anywhere from New York City to the Planet Zanzabar, reading the name of a familiar haunt is an unexpected treat. Thanks to authors like Kelly, some southern New Jersey towns get to enjoy such literary immortality.

"The fun is when someone just picks up the book and is reading it and come across a reference to place they've been," said John Bryans, editor of Plexus Publishing, based in Medford, Burlington County. "I always get a kick out of that, comparing your memory of a place with the description in the novel."

Kelly, a Philadelphia native, spent many summers in southern New Jersey thanks to friends who had beach houses. Her Meg Daniels mystery series, published by Plexus, is set in the summer towns of her youth, with titles such as "Cape Mayhem" and "Wrong Beach Island."

"Because I was a vacationer I had been to a lot of these different cities," Kelly said. "I really didn't want a body washing up in the same small town every weekend, so it was a little more practical to move (the books) from spot to spot."

One of the most well known New Jersey fiction writers is Janet Evanovich, author of the best-selling mystery series featuring clumsy but loveable bounty hunter Stephanie Plum. The 15-book series is set in Trenton, but the author often sends her characters on jaunts along the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway to capture bad guys.

In "Four to Score," Evanovich chronicles Plum's trip to Atlantic City to capture a female fugitive.

"Atlantic City is not so much about neon lights as about good parking. The casinos are built on the boardwalk but truth is, nobody gives a damn about the boardwalk. A.C. is not about ocean. A.C. is about letting it ride. And if you're a senior citizen, so much the better. This is Last Chance Saloon."

Joy Nash, a USA Today Best-selling Romance Author, is best known for her Celtic romances. But when she needed a way to stretch her writer's muscles, she decided on a light romance novel set throughout Atlantic City, Margate, Ventnor and Longport.

In "A Little Light Magic," the characters make stops at Lucy the Elephant, the Margate Dairy Bar and Ozzie's Luncheonette in Longport.

"I spent like every summer in Margate since I was born," Nash said. "We never went to Rita's, we would always go over to the Margate Dairy Bar. Also Sack O' Subs on Ventnor Avenue. And we'd get canoli and bread from Formica's."

Books like Nash's are a welcome addition to the "local" section of Sun Rose Words and Music in Ocean City. Customers can get a taste of their vacation hideaway via light beach reads rather than flipping through mountains of historical data.

"People love to see things mentioned about places in the area that they know," said bookstore owner Rosalyn Lifshin. "It's like 'I've been there! That's right!' It's fun."

The trouble with writing about a real place is that real people live there. And those real people are going to know if you've put the Uncle Bill's Pancake House on the wrong street in Ocean City, or set your character's house on a street in Cape May that doesn't exist.

When writing a novel, Kelly goes to the town and drives the drives that her character makes, checking everything from street signs to speed limit changes. But mistakes happen. In "Killing Time in Ocean City," Kelly accidentally put the Chatterbox restaurant on the wrong street.

"The owner of the Chatterbox was nice enough not to mention it to me, but you feel bad when you make a mistake about that," Kelly said. "You put a lot of effort into driving around for ideas to put into scenes. You have to make sure your memory is right."

That said, sometimes propriety requires a little change of scenery. In "Cape Mayhem," Kelly set her murder at a fictional bed and breakfast rather than a real one.

"I didn't want anything bad to happen in a real place," Kelly said. "I try to make good things happen in real places."

E-mail Courtney McCann:

CMcCann@pressofac.com

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