USA Noir: Best of the Akashic Noir Series

“All the heavy hitters, from Michael Connelly in Los Angeles to Joyce Carol Oates in suburban New Jersey . . . an important anthology.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
 
Features Dennis Lehane’s story “Animal Rescue,” the inspiration for the movie The Drop starring Tom Hardy.
 
Launched with the summer 2004 award-winning bestseller Brooklyn Noir, the groundbreaking Akashic Noir series now includes over sixty volumes and counting. The stories in USA Noir “represent the best of the U.S.-based anthologies, and the list of contributors include virtually anyone who’s made the best-seller list with a work of crime fiction in the last decade . . . a must-have anthology” (Booklist, starred review).
 
Featuring stories by: Dennis Lehane, Don Winslow, Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Susan Straight, Jonathan Safran Foer, Laura Lippman, Pete Hamill, Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Child, T. Jefferson Parker, Lawrence Block, Terrance Hayes, Jerome Charyn, Jeffery Deaver, Maggie Estep, Bayo Ojikutu, Tim McLoughlin, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, Reed Farrel Coleman, Megan Abbott, Elyssa East, James W. Hall, J. Malcolm Garcia, Julie Smith, Joseph Bruchac, Pir Rothenberg, Luis Alberto Urrea, Domenic Stansberry, John O’Brien, S.J. Rozan, Asali Solomon, William Kent Krueger, Tim Broderick, Bharti Kirchner, Karen Karbo, and Lisa Sandlin.
 
One of Zoom Street Magazine’s Favorite Books of 2014
One of “100 Best Books for Readers Young and Old,” HispanicBusiness.com
 
“Perhaps the single most impressive feature of the collection is its range of voices, from Joyce Carol Oates’ faux innocent young family to Megan Abbott’s impressionable high school kids to the chorus of peremptory voices S.J. Rozan plants in a haunted thief’s head. Eat your heart out, Walt Whitman: These are the folks who hear America singing, and moaning and screaming.”—Kirkus Reviews

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* The Akashic noir series was launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Since then, there have been 60 original anthologies, all centered on a specific city, region, or neighborhood in the U.S. and abroad. The 37 stories in this collection represent the best of the U.S.-based anthologies, and the list of contributors includes virtually anyone who’s made the best-seller list with a work of crime fiction in the last decade. Among them are Lee Child, George Pelecanos, Michael Connelly, Don Winslow, Dennis Lehane, and T. Jefferson Parker. Pelecanos offers “The Confidential Informant,” in which a decidedly average street kid tries to live up to an older brother and please his father. The results are not what he bargains for. In “After Thirty,” Don Winslow paints a portrait of Charlie, the poster boy for antiheroes. Charlie is a navy guy, but everyone will tell you he’s no good, what with the drinking and brawling. It’s time to get back to the ship, but Charlie decides to hit a woman, and it gets worse. In “The Book Signing” by Pete Hamill, Carmody, now a best-selling author, returns home to his Brooklyn neighborhood for a book signing. He wonders if the girl he left behind so many years ago will remember him. Memory is a funny thing or, in this case, not so funny. A must-have anthology, particularly for libraries with spotty holdings of the previous U.S. collections. –Wes Lukowsky

Review

“It’s hard to imagine how the present anthology could be topped for sheer marquee appeal . . . Perhaps the single most impressive feature of the collection is its range of voices, from Joyce Carol Oates’ faux innocent young family to Megan Abbott’s impressionable high school kids to the chorus of peremptory voices S.J. Rozan plants in a haunted thief’s head. Eat your heart out, Walt Whitman: These are the folks who hear America singing, and moaning and screaming.”
― Kirkus Reviews

“A must read for mystery fans, not just devotees of Akashic’s ‘Noir’ series, this anthology serves as both an introduction for newcomers and a greatest-hits package for regular readers of the series . . . There isn’t a weak story in the collection . . . Strongly recommended for readers who enjoy mysteries published by Hard Case Crime, as well as for fans of police procedurals.”
― Library Journal, Starred Review

“So, thanks a million to antho editor and Akashic Books head honcho Johnny Temple for doing such a crackerjack job of overloading my schedule with these dark and dirty pleasures.”
― Austin Chronicle

“For those who prefer their crime closer to home, there is USA Noir, a veritable greatest hits of Akashic’s long-running, acclaimed noir anthology series, rounding up solid gold blackness of the bleakest and darkest kind . . . Like Chuck Berry sang, ‘Anything you want, we got right here in the USA.”
― Mystery Scene Magazine

“Hold the eggnog: What you need is a draft of ‘edgy fatalism and sexy recklessness,’ of flashy crime, gallows humor, and ‘desperate deals with a variety of devils,’ served up every year since 2004 by the editors of Akashic Books’ brilliant noir anthologies. From Brooklyn to Boston, from Phoenix to pre- and post-Katrina New Orleans, each volume in the series reveals a city’s distinctive inner darkness.”
― O, the Oprah Magazine