Tag: #NoirFiction

Malice and mayhem simmer beneath the surface of one of America’s favorite vacation areas.

“Youthful alienation and despair dominate the 13 stories in Akashic’s noir volume devoted to Cape Cod. [It] will satisfy those with a hankering for a taste of the dark side.” —Publishers Weekly
“David L. Ulin has put together a malicious collection of short stories that will stay with you long after you return home safe.” —The Cult: The Official Chuck Palahniuk Website

Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.

Brand-new stories by: William Hastings, Elyssa East, Dana Cameron, Paul Tremblay, Adam Mansbach, Seth Greenland, Lizzie Skurnick, David L. Ulin, Kaylie Jones, Fred G. Leebron, Ben Greenman, Dave Zeltserman, and Jedediah Berry.

From the introduction by David L. Ulin:
“Here, we see the inverse of the Cape Cod stereotype, with its sailboats and its presidents. Here, we see the flip side of the Kennedys, of all those preppies in docksiders eating steamers, of the whale watchers and bicycles and kites. Here, we see the Cape beneath the surface, the Cape after the summer people have gone home. It doesn’t make the other Cape any less real, but it does suggest a symbiosis, in which our sense of the place can’t help but become more complicated, less about vacation living than something more nuanced and profound . . .”
“For me, Cape Cod is a repository of memory: forty summers in the same house will do that to you. But it is also a landscape of hidden tensions, which rise up when we least anticipate. In part, this has to do with social aspiration, which is one of the things that brought my family, like many others, to the Cape. In part, it has to do with social division, which has been a factor since at least the end of the nineteenth century, when then summer trade began. There are lines here, lines that get crossed and lines that never get crossed, the kinds of lines that form the web of noir. Call it what you want—summer and smoke is how I think of it—but that’s the Cape Cod at the center of this book.”

Pittsburgh Noir roars forth, exploring the hidden underworld of what has often been called “the most livable city in America.”

“Despite Pittsburgh being labeled the country’s most livable city, the fictional citizens populating the 14 high quality stories in Akashic’s noir anthology centered on the Steel City have the same dreams, frustrations, passions, and vices as anyone else.” —Publishers Weekly
“Perfect for adventurous book groups and for travelers seeking the less rosy side of the cities they’re planning to visit.” —Library Journal

Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.
Brand-new stories by: Stewart O’Nan, Hilary Masters, Lila Shaara, Rebecca Drake, Kathleen George, Paul Lee, K. C. Constantine, Nancy Martin, Kathryn Miller Haines, Terrance Hayes, Carlos Delgado, Aubrey Hirsch, Tom Lipinski, and Reginald McKnight.
From the introduction by Kathleen George:
“When the steel business faltered and died, ‘the smoky city’ reinvented itself as a white-collar urban site, fueled by its thriving universities. It had been a place so dark with pollution in the steel days that men carried clean shirts with them to work in order to change during the day. Now you can see the hills, the rivers, the rhythmic skyline—and as the cameras are fond of displaying at sports events, the city is now glittering and beautiful . . .
“What is Pittsburgh to noir and noir to Pittsburgh? We certainly have our rough streets and grisly murders. But dark crime stories depend on something in addition to killing. The best examples of the genre revolve around private moralities and private law; they are the stories of people pushing against real or imagined oppression. In Pittsburgh Noir, as in most of the novels and films that gave the genre its name, the real story is the dark underbelly of existence, the fear and guilt and rebellion and denial in regular people: the woman buying groceries, the man grilling hot dogs. Their secret lives.”

Scandinavian writing has been dominating the global crime fiction landscape, and this volume offers a delicious, devious sampling.

“The latest entry in the publisher’s series (41 and counting) proves the resilience of, and market for, these locale noirs. Editor Bo Tao Michaëlis, a Danish book critic, is both scholarly and insightful in the introduction and outlines how the stories reflect the greed and ennui of modern Denmark in contrast to the Danish idyll depicted in tourist brochures. [ . . . ] Although some stories veer from noir orthodoxy, there are fine examples of lyrical writing, noir sensibilities, and insight into the current Danish psyche. Overall, a very impressive anthology.” —Library Journal
“The indefatigable noir series of anthologies (Orange County Noir, Trinidad Noir, Brooklyn Noir 3, etc.) focuses in its 43rd volume on the home of Hans Christian Andersen. [ . . . ] Based on this collection, Copenhagen may be a great place to visit, but nobody seems to live there, at least not well or long.” —Kirkus Reviews

Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.
Brand-new stories by: Naja Marie Aidt, Jonas T. Bengtsson, Helle Helle, Christian Dorph & Simon Pasternak, Susanne Staun, Lene Kaaberbøl & Agente Friis, Klaus Rifbjerg, Gretelise Holm, Georg Ursin, Kristian Lundberg, Kristina Stoltz, Seyit Öztürk, Benn Q. Holm, and Gunnar Staalesen.
From the introduction by Bo Tao Michaëlis:
“Copenhagen: the Little Mermaid, H.C. Andersen, Søren Kierkegaard, and Karen Blixen, a big city that perhaps more than any other is the absolute capital, origin, and center of northern European romanticism of the 1800s. Denmark’s Copenhagen, with its ramparts and moats forming the shell of the city and suburbs, has retained a glint of back then, that world of yesterday . . . At one point our metropolis was presented as an idyllic, modest-sized big city, where police stopped traffic when a mother duck guided her ugly ducklings across the street populated by cars, bicycles, and streetcars. But naturally, and quite unfortunately, such is the case no longer. Copenhagen long ago abandoned its Sleeping Beauty slumber for a cosmopolitan night and day that never sleeps . . . Those times are gone forever.
“All the short stories in Copenhagen Noir are about meaninglessness, violence, and murder in various districts of the city . . . Common for all the writers is a love for Copenhagen and for the dark story of coincidence and necessity, the good and bad luck of humans. In a metropolis that both has a style of its own yet also resembles the other black pearls of cities across the globe: New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, and Berlin. Enjoy.”

“This entry, with its high-quality stories from such genre masters as Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain, outshines the typical all-original anthology.”—Publishers Weekly
 
In Akashic Books’s acclaimed series of original noir anthologies, each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. This collection of classic stories—the sequel to the award-winning, bestselling Los Angeles Noir—”reaffirm[s] that the shadows cast by the Southland’s sun, and its gloomy ocean fog, have proved some of noir’s most fertile territory” (Los Angeles Times).
 
This anthology features stories by Raymond Chandler, Paul Cain, James Ellroy, Leigh Brackett, James M. Cain, Chester Himes, Ross MacDonald, Walter Mosley, Naomi Hirahara, Margaret Millar, Joseph Hansen, William Campbell Gault, Jervey Tervalon, Kate Braverman, and Yxta Maya Murray.
 
“If you love either mysteries or tales about our corner of the world, pick up Noir 2 . . . Hey, the concept of ‘noir’—dark, steamy mystery stories—was invented here.”—Los Angeles Daily News

Ralph E. Vaughan

5 out of 5 stars

Noir the Way it’s Supposed to Be

Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2021

Format: Kindle

Verified Purchase

What this collection of older stories goes to show is how lost modern writers of noir have become, how far from the mark they have strayed. Although a dark vein of violence and brutality weaves its way through many of the stories, it never becomes the sole reason for a story’s existence. The characters and situations, even without overt violence, become manifestations of a nihilistic universe. In these older stories, restraint is also shown in language, which only serves to highlight characters, situations and dire fates. Without the crutches depended upon by modern writers, there is nothing to diminish the impact of shattering climaxes.