USA Noir

Starred review from September 9, 2013
Temple, Akashic’s publisher and editor-in-chief, is the force behind the press’s series of noir anthologies in which each installment focuses on a different locale. This compendium showcases 37 exceptional stories from 32 separate volumes, in six thematic categories: “True Grit,” “American Values,” “Road Rage,” “Homeland Security,” “Under the Influence,” and “Street Justice.” A number of the contributors, including Lawrence Block, Laura Lippman, Joyce Carol Oates, George Pelecanos, and Dennis Lehane, have edited individual series entries. Pete Hamill’s “The Book Signing,” Reed Farrel Coleman’s “Mastermind,” and Megan Abbott’s “Our Eyes Couldn’t Stop Opening” are especially good. The humor—where there is any—is fittingly dark, as in Block’s outstanding “The Ehrengraf Settlement.” Other notable tales are Luis Alberto Urrea’s punch-in-the-gut “Amapola” and Lehane’s deliciously twisted “Animal Rescue.” Readers will be hard put to find a better collection of short stories in any genre.

October 15, 2013
Temple, general editor of Akashic's series of noir collections (Brooklyn Noir, 2004, etc.), skims the cream from the first 59 volumes. It's hard to imagine how the present anthology could be topped for sheer marquee appeal. Seasoned pros contribute stories as proficient as they are characteristic. Lawrence Block tangles quick-thinking lawyer Martin Ehrengraf in a tricky domestic triangle. Michael Connelly follows a forensic reconstructionist to a suspicious car accident on Mulholland Drive. Pete Hamill brings a successful author back to his hometown for a book signing. Lee Child's reporter abruptly rings down the curtain on the killing of a 14-year-old girl. The field is expanded by Tim Broderick's comic-book tale of Wall Street malfeasance and dispatches from Laura Lippman's Baltimore, Dennis Lehane's Boston, Julie Smith's New Orleans, James W. Hall's Miami, George Pelecanos's D.C., and even Jonathan Safran Foer's suburban New Jersey. Yet, the results are more professional than inspired. Like a series of postcards, the stories leave you with good memories of past encounters rather than creating bold new experiences. 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. A helpful U.S. map locating the places where all the 37 reprints are set indicates that, with a few notable exceptions--New Orleans, Detroit, Chicago, the Twin Cities, Kansas City, Phoenix, Las Vegas and, of course, Texas--noir seems to flourish overwhelmingly in coastal blue states. Sociologists and pollsters take note.

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Starred review from December 1, 2013
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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

Starred review from August 1, 2013

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. Broken into six parts (True Grit, American Values, Road Rage, Homeland Security, Under the Influence, and Street Justice), the volume contains the best short mystery fiction has to offer. Some authors deliver their usual goods (George Pelecanos's entry, "The Confidential Informant," treads his familiar storytelling lines but packs a devastating emotional punch just the same) while other entries tend to surprise (Michael Connelly's playful "Mullholland Dive," for example). The best of these stories are tightly written character studies with an amazing sense of place, be it San Diego or Pittsburgh, while also concisely examining larger issues such as domestic violence, post-traumatic stress disorder, or gentrification. There isn't a weak story in the collection, and readers will be inspired to check out not only the other volumes in the series (now pushing 60 titles) but also the back catalogs of each of the authors. VERDICT Strongly recommended for readers who enjoy mysteries published by Hard Case Crime, as well as for fans of police procedurals. Not recommended for readers who are 100 percent committed to cozies exclusively, but other mystery fans who give it a chance will find much to enjoy.--Julie Elliott, Indiana Univ. Lib., South Bend

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