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The Best American Noir Of The Century
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Book Synopsis The Best American Noir of the Century by : Otto Penzler
Download or read book The Best American Noir of the Century written by Otto Penzler and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2011 with total page 755 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A treasure trove of a hundred years' worth of the finest noir writing selected by James Ellroy
Book Synopsis You'll Always Remember Me by : Steve Fisher
Download or read book You'll Always Remember Me written by Steve Fisher and published by Overamstel Uitgevers. This book was released on 2013-08-27 with total page 45 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In military school, a teenager holds a secret that could save a young man from the gallows Clark’s is the finest military institution on the West Coast, but pay them enough and they’ll take anybody. That’s how Martin Thorpe ended up there, a fourteen-year-old boy with a habit of getting thrown out of boarding schools. Too smart for his own good, Thorpe is currently obsessed with the trial of Tommy Smith—a young man who has just been sentenced to hang for murdering his father. Thorpe has been dating Tommy’s sister, was at the house the night of the murder, and may know something that could save Tommy’s life. The detective investigating the case has questions for Thorpe. Why were Tommy and his father fighting that night? What did Thorpe hear the old man say before he was killed? And why does Thorpe have such a blood-stained permanent record? In this chilling Black Mask classic, nothing is more terrifying than what lurks at the back of the mind of Martin Thorpe. This ebook features an introduction by Keith Alan Deutsch.
Download or read book Daylight Noir written by Catherine Corman and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Daylight Noir: Raymond Chandler's Imagined City comprises photographs of all the ominous, forbidding locations in Los Angeles Chandler wrote about in his novels. These places - from Malibu Pier to the Hollywood Sign, from Union Station to the Beverly Hills Hotel, from MGM Studies to Musso & Frank's Grill - form the literary geography of his imagination." "Chandler was drawn to the Edward Hopper-like loneliness of the city: the separate existences that never, finally, merge. In these photographs, Catherine Corman has given us, as Jonathan Lethem writes in his preface, a "supremely evocative catalogue of haunted places ... these streets and buildings we have erected in order to give order to our solitudes.""--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book USA Noir written by Dennis Lehane and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2013-10-14 with total page 619 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “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
Book Synopsis Twin Cities Noir: The Expanded Edition (Akashic Noir) by : Julie Schaper
Download or read book Twin Cities Noir: The Expanded Edition (Akashic Noir) written by Julie Schaper and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2013-08-06 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Local editors Schaper and Horwitz have assembled a noteworthy collection of noir-infused stories mixed with laughter…The Akashic noir short-story anthologies are avidly sought and make ideal samplers for regional mystery collecting." --Library Journal "The best pieces in the collection turn the clichés of the genre on their head . . . and despite the unseemly subject matter, the stories are often surprisingly funny." —City Pages (Minneapolis) Brand-new stories from John Jodzio, Tom Kaczynski, and Peter Schilling, Jr., in addition to the original volume's stories by David Housewright, Steve Thayer, Judith Guest, Mary Logue, Bruce Rubenstein, K.J. Erickson, William Kent Krueger, Ellen Hart, Brad Zellar, Mary Sharratt, Pete Hautman, Larry Millett, Quinton Skinner, Gary Bush, and Chris Everheart. "St. Paul was originally called Pig's Eye's Landing and was named after Pig's Eye Parrant--trapper, moonshiner, and proprietor of the most popular drinking establishment on the Mississippi. Traders, river rats, missionaries, soldiers, land speculators, fur trappers, and Indian agents congregated in his establishment and made their deals. When Minnesota became a territory in 1849, the town leaders, realizing that a place called Pig's Eye might not inspire civic confidence, changed the name to St. Paul, after the largest church in the city . . . Across the river, Minneapolis has its own sordid story. By the turn of the twentieth century it was considered one of the most crooked cities in the nation. Mayor Albert Alonzo Ames, with the assistance of the chief of police, his brother Fred, ran a city so corrupt that according to Lincoln Steffans its 'deliberateness, invention, and avarice has never been equaled.' As recently as the mid-'90s, Minneapolis was called 'Murderopolis' due to a rash of killings that occurred over a long hot summer . . . Every city has its share of crime, but what makes the Twin Cities unique may be that we have more than our share of good writers to chronicle it. They are homegrown and they know the territory--how the cities look from the inside, out . . ."
Download or read book L.A. Noir written by John Buntin and published by Crown. This book was released on 2010-04-06 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now the TNT Original Series MOB CITY Midcentury Los Angeles. A city sold to the world as "the white spot of America," a land of sunshine and orange groves, wholesome Midwestern values and Hollywood stars, protected by the world’s most famous police force, the Dragnet-era LAPD. Behind this public image lies a hidden world of "pleasure girls" and crooked cops, ruthless newspaper tycoons, corrupt politicians, and East Coast gangsters on the make. Into this underworld came two men—one L.A.’ s most notorious gangster, the other its most famous police chief—each prepared to battle the other for the soul of the city.
Download or read book American Rust written by Philipp Meyer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-04-06 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NOW A MAJOR TV SERIES STARRING JEFF DANIELS AND MAURA TIERNEY An American voice reminiscent of Steinbeck – a debut novel on friendship, loyalty, and love, centering on a murder in a dying Pennsylvania steel town, from the bestselling author of THE SON. Isaac is the smartest kid in town, left behind to care for his sick father after his mother dies by suicide and his sister Lee moves away. Now Isaac wants out too. Not even his best friend, Billy Poe, can stand in his way: broad-shouldered Billy, always ready for a fight, still living in his mother's trailer. Then, on the very day of Isaac's leaving, something happens that changes the friends' fates and tests the loyalties of their friendship and those of their lovers, families, and the town itself. Evoking John Steinbeck's novels of restless lives during the Great Depression, American Rust is an extraordinarily moving novel about the bleak realities that battle our desire for transcendence, and the power of love and friendship to redeem us. 'A startlingly mature and impressive debut' KATE ATKINSON 'Darkly disturbing and darkly compelling' PATRICIA CORNWELL 'Written with considerable dramatic intensity and pace' COLM TÓIBÍN 'A masterpiece. The best book to come out of America since The Road' CHRIS CLEAVE
Download or read book New Orleans Noir written by Ted O'Brien and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This original anthology of noir fiction set across the Big Easy includes new stories by Ace Atkins, Laura Lippman, Maureen Tan, and more. New Orleans has always the home of the lovable rogue, the poison magnolia, the bent politico, and the heartless con artist. And in post-Katrina times, it’s the same old story—only with a new breed of carpetbagger thrown in. In other words, it’s fertile ground for noir fiction. This sparkling collection of tales, set both before and after the storm, explores the city’s gutted neighborhoods, its outwardly gleaming “sliver by the river,” its still-raunchy French Quarter, and other hoods so far from the Quarter they might as well be on another continent. It also looks back into the city’s darkly colorful, nineteenth century past. New Orleans Noir includes brand-new stories by Ace Atkins, Laura Lippman, Patty Friedmann, Barbara Hambly, Tim McLoughlin, Olympia Vernon, David Fulmer, Jervey Tervalon, James Nolan, Kalamu ya Salaam, Maureen Tan, Thomas Adcock, Jeri Cain Rossi, Christine Wiltz, Greg Herren, Julie Smith, Eric Overmyer, and Ted O’Brien. A portion of the profits from New Orleans Noir will be donated to Katrina KARES, a hurricane relief program sponsored by the New Orleans Institute that awards grants to writers affected by the hurricane.
Book Synopsis New Jersey Noir by : Jonathan Safran Foer
Download or read book New Jersey Noir written by Jonathan Safran Foer and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the darker side of the Garden State with this anthology of gritty mystery stories. Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each volume is compromised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct location within the geographical area of the book. In New Jersey Noir, a star-studded cast of authors sifts through the hidden dirt of the Garden State. Featuring brand-new stories (and a few poems) by Joyce Carol Oates, Jonathan Safran Foer, Robert Pinsky, Edmund White & Michael Carroll, Richard Burgin, Pulitzer Prize–winner Paul Muldoon, Sheila Kohler, C.K. Williams, Gerald Stern, Lou Manfredo, S.A. Solomon, Bradford Morrow, Jonathan Santlofer, Jeffrey Ford, S.J. Rozan, Barry N. Malzberg & Bill Pronzini, Hirsh Sawhney, and Robert Arellano. Praise for New Jersey Noir “Oates’s introduction to Akashic’s noir volume dedicated to the Garden State, with its evocative definition of the genre, is alone worth the price of the book . . . Highlights include Lou Manfredo’s “Soul Anatomy,” in which a politically connected rookie cop is involved in a fatal shooting in Camden; S.J. Rozan’s “New Day Newark,” in which an elderly woman takes a stand against two drug-dealing gangs; and Jonathan Santlofer’s “Lola,” in which a struggling Hoboken artist finds his muse . . . . Poems by C.K. Williams, Paul Muldoon, and others—plus photos by Gerald Slota—enhance this distinguished entry.” —Publishers Weekly “It was inevitable that this fine noir series would reach New Jersey. It took longer than some readers might have wanted, but, oh boy, was it worth the wait . . . More than most of the entries in the series, this volume is about mood and atmosphere more than it is about plot and character . . . It should go without saying that regular readers of the noir series will seek this one out, but beyond that, the book also serves as a very good introduction to what is a popular but often misunderstood term and style of writing.” —Booklist, Starred Review “A lovingly collected assortment of tales and poems that range from the disturbing to the darkly humorous.” —Shelf Awareness
Book Synopsis Staten Island Noir by : Patricia Smith
Download or read book Staten Island Noir written by Patricia Smith and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2012-11-06 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a collection of short stories featuring noir and crime fiction about Staten Island, New York, by such authors as Todd Craig, Linda Nieves-Powell, S. J. Rozan, and Patricia Smith.
Book Synopsis The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021 by : Steph Cha
Download or read book The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021 written by Steph Cha and published by Mariner Books. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Steph Cha, a rising star who brings a fresh perspective as series editor, takes the helm of the new The Best American Mystery and Suspense, with best-selling crime novelist Alafair Burke joining her as the first guest editor. "Crime writers, forgive the pun, are killing it right now creatively," writes guest editor Alafair Burke in her introduction. "It was difficult--painful even--to narrow this year's Best American Mystery and Suspense to only twenty stories." Spanning from a mediocre spa in Florida, to New York's gritty East Village, to death row in Alabama, this collection reveals boundless suspense in small, quiet moments, offering startling twists in the least likely of places. From a powerful response to hateful bullying, to a fight for health care, to a gripping desperation to vote, these stories are equal parts shocking, devastating, and enthralling, revealing the tension pulsing through our everyday lives and affirming that mystery and suspense writing is better than ever before. The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021includes JENNY BHATT- GAR ANTHONY HAYWOOD- GABINO IGLESIAS- AYA DE LEÓN- LAURA LIPPMAN DELIA C. PITTS- ALEX SEGURA- FAYE SNOWDEN- LISA UNGER and others
Download or read book Shadow Roll written by Ki Longfellow and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's 1948. We're on Staten Island where no one who is anyone would ever set foot. We're with Sam Russo, a neglected graduate of the Staten Island Home for Children. Self-named and self-styled, Russo's not long back from World War II where his unit fought on the Pacific Front with the very last of America's mounted troops. A dreamer with the gift of gab, Russo is now a young private eye who'd like to follow in the hard-boiled footsteps of Bogart's Philip Marlowe or Bogart's Sam Spade-if only he was hard-boiled. In this, his first serious case, it's a dream come true. Sam has two loves: racehorses and books. Now he's up to his hocks in the murders of three promising young jockeys in Saratoga Springs at America's oldest race track. The police want it all shoved under the carpet, the track wants three deaths to be three strange accidents, Sam Russo wants to prove he's a real Private Eye. Race horses, a gorgeous sassy dame, the Season at Saratoga, what more could a PI want? To survive it.
Download or read book Milwaukee Noir written by Jane Hamilton and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this gritty anthology, fourteen mystery stories show the seedier side of the Wisconsin city beyond beer, butter burgers, and Laverne & Shirley. Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respect city. Now, fourteen authors who’ve experienced life in the Cream City share its mysteries in Milwaukee Noir. With stories from: Jane Hamilton, Reed Farrel Coleman, Valerie Laken, Matthew J. Prigge, Shauna Singh Baldwin, Vida Cross, Larry Watson, Frank Wheeler Jr., Derrick Harriell, Christi Clancy, James E. Causey, Mary Thorson, Nick Petrie, and Jennifer Morales. Praise for Milwaukee Noir “Luxuriate in the seedy, wallow in the angry and shiver at the horrors that surely await you around the corner . . . The sheer localness of Milwaukee Noir is superb, and the seediness of many characters here would qualify them for membership in a Tom Waits song.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “A very strong collection of short fiction. . . . A richly textured collection that is, by turns, gripping, thought provoking, and simply entertaining.” —Booklist “The violent, dark stories in this anthology fit the bill perfectly with the intention, as editor Hennessy writes, to be social commentary . . . . Tales by Jane Hamilton and Christi Clancy stand out, evidence that ordinary people can get swept up in hatred, even if they did not start out living with violence, drunkenness, or poverty.” —Library Journal “Milwaukee bookseller and writer Hennessy does justice to the harsher aspects of his hometown in this fine anthology . . . The 14 contributors show that violence is not a prerequisite to crafting a haunting depiction of despair . . . The selections make the different neighborhoods, seedy or otherwise, come to life, even for those who have never set foot in them.” —Publishers Weekly “Fourteen free-wheeling stories document the grit and glory of Milwaukee . . . A nod to Milwaukee’s blue-collar heritage, a frank look at racial disharmony, and a peek at the future make Hennessy’s collection a find for fans of urban noir.” —Kirkus Reviews
Download or read book The L.A. Quartet written by James Ellroy and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 1415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here in one volume is James Ellroy's first great body of work, an epic re-envisioning of postwar Los Angeles--etched in red and black and film-noir grays. The Black Dahlia depicts the secret infrastructure of L.A.'s most sensational murder case. A young cop morphs into obsessed lover and lust-crazed avenger. The Dahlia claims him. She is the deus ex machina of a boomtown in extremis. The cop's rogue investigation is a one-way ticket to hell. The Big Nowhere blends the crime novel and the political novel. It is winter, 1950--and the L.A. County Grand Jury is out to slam movieland Reds. It's a reverential shuck--and the three cops assigned to the job are out to grab all the glory they can. A series of brutal sex killings intervenes, and the job goes all-the-way bad. L.A. Confidential is the great novel of Los Angeles in the 1950s. Political corruption. Scandal-rag journalism. Bad racial juju and gangland wars. Six local stiffs slaughtered in an all-night hash house. The glorious and overreaching LAPD on an unprecedented scale. White Jazz gives us the tortured confession of a corrupt cop going down for the count. He's a slumlord, a killer, a parasitic exploiter. He's a pawn in a series of police power plays and starting to see that he's being had. He's just met a woman. Thus, he's determined to claw his way out of the horrifying world he's created--and he's determined to tell us everything. The L.A. Quartet is a groundbreaking work of American popular fiction.
Download or read book Presidio written by Randy Kennedy and published by Atria Books. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Fluent, mordant, authentic, propulsive…wonderfully lit from within” (Lee Child, The New York Times Book Review), this critically acclaimed, stunningly mature literary debut is the darkly comic story of a car thief on the run in the gritty and arid landscape of the 1970s Texas panhandle. In this “stellar debut,” (Publishers Weekly) car thief Troy Falconer returns home after years of wandering to reunite with his younger brother, Harlan. The two set out in search of Harlan’s wife, Bettie, who’s left him cold and run away with the little money he had. When stealing a station wagon for their journey, Troy and Harlan find they’ve accidentally kidnapped a Mennonite girl, Martha Zacharias, sleeping in the back of the car. But Martha turns out to be a stubborn survivor who refuses to be sent home, so together, these unlikely road companions haphazardly attempt to escape across the Mexican border, pursued by the police and Martha’s vengeful father. But this is only one layer of Troy’s story. Through interjecting entries from his journal that span decades of an unraveling life, we learn that Troy has become so estranged from society that he’s shunned the very idea of personal property. Instead of claiming possessions, he works motels, stealing the suitcases and cars of men roughly his size, living with their things until those things feel too much like his own, at which point he finds another motel and vanishes again into another man’s identity. Richly nuanced and complex, “like a nesting doll, [Presidio] continually uncovers stories within stories” (Ian Stansel, author of The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo). With a page-turning plot, prose as gritty and austere as the novel’s Texas panhandle setting, and a determined yet doomed cast of characters ranging from con artists to religious outcasts, this “rich and rare book” (Annie Proulx, author of Barkskins) packs a kick like a shot of whiskey. Perfect for fans of Cormac McCarthy, Denis Johnson, and Larry McMurtry, who said that Kennedy “captures the funny yet tragic relentlessness of survival in an unforgiving place. Let’s hope he keeps his novelistic cool and brings us much, much more.”
Book Synopsis Tampa Bay Noir (Akashic Noir) by : Colette Bancroft
Download or read book Tampa Bay Noir (Akashic Noir) written by Colette Bancroft and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tampa Bay joins Miami in representing the (alleged) Sunshine State in the Noir Series arena. “Fifteen tales that reveal the dark side of sunny Tampa Bay.” —Kirkus Reviews Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct location within the geographic area of the book. Brand-new stories by: Michael Connelly, Lori Roy, Ace Atkins, Karen Brown, Tim Dorsey, Lisa Unger, Sterling Watson, Luis Castillo, Sarah Gerard, Danny López, Ladee Hubbard, Gale Massey, Yuly Restrepo Garcés, Eliot Schrefer, and Colette Bancroft.
Book Synopsis Chicago Noir: The Classics (Akashic Noir) by : Joe Meno
Download or read book Chicago Noir: The Classics (Akashic Noir) written by Joe Meno and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2015-08-10 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this superior entry in Akashic's noir series, Meno offers nearly a century of Chicago crime fiction....Familiar bylines abound: Max Allan Collins, Richard Wright, Nelson Algren, Sherwood Anderson, Fredric Brown, Patricia Highsmith (with an excerpt from her novel The Price of Salt), Stewart M. Kaminsky, Sara Paretsky. Others may be less familiar to mystery specialists, but all turn in impressive performances." --Publishers Weekly, Starred review "Richard Wright, Nelson Algren, and Sandra Cisneros are not crime-fiction writers, and yet their Chicago certainly embodies the individual-crushing ethos endemic to noir. Meno also includes stories from writers who could easily have been overlooked (Percy Spurlark Parker, Hugh Holton) to ensure that diverse voices, and neighborhoods, are represented. Add in smart and essential choices from Fredric Brown, Sara Paretsky, and Stuart Kaminsky, and you have not an anthology not for crime-fiction purists, perhaps, but a thought-provoking document all the same." --Booklist "The fifteen short stories comprising Chicago Noir: The Classics, which are knowledgeably compiled and deftly edited by Joe Meno, are true gems of the noir literary tradition....Chicago Noir: The Classics is a consistently entertaining and will prove to be an enduringly popular addition to community library Mystery/Suspense collections." --Midwest Book Review "I've always enjoyed reading noir. Dark, ironic mysteries are a good read to me. Since this collection includes old classics as well as some new stories, I knew it would be good....I wasn't disappointed." --Journey of a Bookseller "Chicago Noir The Classics does everything anthologies and noir are supposed to, but this title achieves an unheralded goal that deserves notice....This is wonderful diversity, coming both unexpected and unhearalded. Anthologies are supposed to convey a sense of having covered the territory, Joe Meno has. Ethnically diverse city, ethnically diverse plots. Better, Chicago Noir The Classics showcases diversity as normal, everyday. This adds inescapable satisfaction to a sense of the editor's having covered the territory." --La Bloga "A worthy addition to the Akashic Books noir series." --Book Chase Although Los Angeles may be considered the most quintessentially "noir" American city, this volume reveals that pound-for-pound, Chicago has historically been able to stand up to any other metropolis in the noir arena. Classic reprints from: Harry Stephen Keeler, Sherwood Anderson, Max Allan Collins, Richard Wright, Nelson Algren, Fredric Brown, Patricia Highsmith, Barry Gifford, Stuart M. Kaminsky, Libby Fischer Hellmann, Sara Paretsky, Percy Spurlark Parker, Sandra Cisneros, Hugh Holton, and Stuart Dybek. From the introduction by Joe Meno: "More corrupt than New York, less glamorous than LA, Chicago has more murders per capita than any other city its size. With its sleek skyscrapers bisecting the fading sky like an unspoken threat, Chicago is the closest metropolis to the mythical city of shadows as first described in the work of Chandler, Hammett, and Cain. Only in Chicago do instituted color lines offer generation after generation of poverty and violence, only in Chicago do the majority of governors do prison time, only in Chicago do the dead actually vote twice. "Chicago--more than the metropolis that gave the world Al Capone, the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, the death of John Dillinger, the crimes of Leopold and Loeb, the horrors of John Wayne Gacy, the unprecedented institutional corruption of so many recent public officials, more than the birthplace of Raymond Chandler--is a city of darkness. This darkness is not an act of over-imagination. It's the unadulterated truth. It's a pointed though necessary reminder of the grave tragedies of the past and the failed possibilities of the present. Fifty years in the future, I hope these stories are read only as fiction, as somewhat distant fantasy. Here's hoping for some light."
