But if our anonymous Googler was looking for links between Walter and the Rocket, (s)he's in luck. Curiosity got the better of me and I did some sleuthing of my own. I ended up coming across this local literary tour (NB: it links to a PDF) in Out There from all the way back in October 2007. Landmark number eight on the walking portion of the tour is the Rocket on Main, which makes an appearance in Walter's acclaimed novel Citizen Vince.
To quote Walter from the article: "My friend, Dan Spalding, owns the Rocket in the Longbotham building there, and so I spent quite a lot of time there; it was inevitable that it would work its way in. [...] I needed a place for this guy that lived down on the bluff to be living, so it made sense that my character would be sitting at the Rocket bakery looking across the street at the [Saranac]. Sometimes it is as simple as that, you just open your eyes and that is what you end up describing."
Incidentally, the tour was written by the magazine's founder, Jon Snyder, who, as you might already know, now has a spot on the city council and is trying to make Spokane more conducive to bicycling and walking tours of all sorts.
So that makes two authors — Walter and Susan Nipp — that have inspired local literary tours. Are there any others?
Quick postscript: An interview with Walter (another PDF link) in the recent issue of Willow Springs has some interesting comments about the city. To wit: "I never set out to create Spokane. I was a crime reporter, so I think I’ve probably created a much more downtrodden, crime-ridden, nasty-ass place than really exists," and: "I think Spokane is one of the most isolated cities of its size in the United States, and that its isolation casts a lot of different shadows. I think there’s a sense of isolation here that’s great for fiction."
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