Five years ago, a reader named Jeremy Heist of Upland wrote me a nice long note, much of it about his connection to St. Louis, after hearing (incorrectly) that I hailed from there, rather than from remote Illinois. But Heist went on to say that he gives copies of Jonathan Franzen’s first novel, “The 27th City,” “which takes place all over St. Louis,” to local friends from there. “Check it out sometime if you haven’t,” Heist urged.

I eventually found a copy of the novel at a used bookstore, bought it and put it on my bookshelf. There it languished, as if the simple act of purchasing it was the achievement, actually reading it being secondary.

Planning a visit to St. Louis, I pulled “27th City” down in late September to read. It’s a 517-page brick with dozens of characters, and a plot that involves a political conspiracy to reunite the city and county, their separation being blamed for the city’s slide into irrelevancy during the 20th century. “Municipal science fiction,” one reviewer called it. I can’t say I loved it, and I’m not even sure I liked it. But it held my interest, perhaps primarily because of the novelty of being set in such an overlooked locale.

I met Heist a couple of times, once in Pomona at an experimental, and fairly awful, traveling film festival called 20,000 Leagues, and once, the last time, in Claremont outside the Folk Music Center, where Dave Alvin would perform. Heist had a degenerative condition that made breathing an effort. He didn’t think his chances were good.

And apparently they weren’t; a database search shows that he died a few months later.

Too bad, for all sorts of reasons that pertain to him and his family, not to me. Personally, though, I’d have liked to sit down with him and talk about the book.