A book review in the Christian Science Monitor suggests that McMansions lend themselves to good mysteries:

Forget crumbling castles or isolated mansions. The recession has created something truly rare: a whole new kind of haunted house. The summer’s best two mysteries are both set in shoddy subdivisions of McMansions – relics of wrecked hopes built just before the housing bubble popped in 2007. Both feature seemingly golden couples, one Irish and one American, who lose the ability to cope when the world suddenly throws out the guidebook to the good life. And both offer shrewdly written, darkly compelling stories that rank among the year’s best.

So there is at least one good thing about McMansions: they make for good dystopian settings!

I will note that this is not limited to fiction books. A number of movies and television shows also use McMansions as a backdrop. Think of The Sopranos or the Real Housewives series. As with books, there is some commentary here as well: McMansions are lived in by certain kinds of people.