Vancouver Noir (Akashic Noir)

This “excellent anthology” of noir fiction set in Canada’s City of Glass features all-new stories by Linda L. Richards, Sam Wiebe, Yasuko Thanh and more (Quill & Quire, starred review).

For many people, Vancouver is a city of affluence, athleisure, and craft beer. But if look a little closer at this gentrified paradise, you’ll find the old saying holds true: behind every fortune there’s a crime. Hidden beneath Vancouver’s gleaming glass skyscrapers are shadowy streets where poverty, drugs, and violence rule the day. These fourteen stories of crime and mayhem in the Pacific Northwest offer an entertaining “mix of wily pros, moody misfits, bewildered bystanders, and a touch of the supernatural” (Kirkus).

Vancouver Noir features the Arthur Ellis Award-winning story “Terminal City” by Linda L. Richards, and the Arthur Ellis Award-finalist “Wonderful Life” by Sam Wiebe. It also includes entries by Timothy Taylor, Sheena Kamal, Robin Spano, Carleigh Baker, Dietrich Kalteis, Nathan Ripley, Yasuko Thanh, Kristi Charish, Don English, Nick Mamatas, S.G. Wong, and R.M. Greenaway.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Wiebe and the 13 other mostly Canadian contributors to this solid anthology expose the seedy underbelly that belies the Vancouver known to tourists and fans of the many films shot in Hollywood North . . . Noir aficionados will find plenty to like.”
― Publishers Weekly

“The latest Akashic ‘Noir’ collection features stories by Canadian writers, both crime writers and not, residents and expats, with stories all about characters who live in gritty everyday Vancouver, BC, settings . . . For fans of the city, noir fiction, and the series.
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― Library Journal

“Vancouver Noir is an excellent anthology that would appeal to short-story fans of all types – even those who don’t read the genre on a regular basis . . . Like the earlier volumes Toronto Noir and Montreal Noir, the new anthology serves as a fantastic introduction for those unfamiliar with the genre and a reminder that Canada, bursting with amazing writers, is one of the strongest countries for crime writing in the world.”
― Quill & Quire, Starred Review

“The beauty of the Akashic series of noir short story anthologies is that they offer local writers a chance to say ‘here’s our town.’ This crop of writers, assembled and edited by Sam Wiebe, succeeds in a gritty, moody way.
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― New York Journal of Books

“There’s the Vancouver of charming neighborhoods, vast verdant parks, lovely beaches and snow-capped mountains as a backdrop to it all. But the Vancouver of the newly published Vancouver Noir collection of 14 original short stories is the unsettling underside of all that ― and the project masterminds couldn’t be happier.
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― Globe & Mail

About the Author

Sam Wiebe is the author of the Vancouver crime novels Last of the Independents, Invisible Dead, and Cut You Down. Wiebe’s work has won an Arthur Ellis Award and the Kobo Emerging Writers Prize, and he was the 2016 Vancouver Public Library Writer in Residence. His short fiction has appeared in ThugLit, Spinetingler, and subTerrain, among other places.