Mark Binelli has a list of ten novels that have distinctive depictions of cities in them, pushing them beyond the role of setting to something closer to a supporting cast. One example:

Davis has written extensively, and brilliantly, about Los Angeles, but City of Quartz, for my money, is his greatest book about one of my favorite American cities. As simultaneously visionary and paranoid as a Philip K. Dick novel, populated with an eccentric cast of characters ranging from L. Ron Hubbard to Ornette Coleman.