St. Louis Noir

June 6, 2016
Since few of the 14 contributors to the St. Louis volume in Akashic’s noir series are established writers of crime fiction, it’s no surprise that the most notable tales are the work of three genre veterans. John Lutz (Single White Female) delivers a strong tale of vengeance, “The Brick Wall,” about a race-car driver who fears he’s in mortal peril amid the traffic on Interstate 64. “Deserted Cities of the Heart,” by Paul D. Marks (White Heat), charts the fall of loner Daniel Hayden after he meets femme fatale Amber Loy at the Gateway Arch. In “A Paler Shade of Death,” Laura Benedict (Bliss House) follows a divorced woman’s unsettling relocation to suburban Glendale and her subsequent descent into chaos. Also effective are Colleen J. McElroy’s “Blues for the River City,” in which four disadvantaged youths sneak into a luxurious theater with larceny in mind, and Umar Lee’s “A St. Louis Christmas,” the best of the drug-scene stories, but on the whole this is a relatively lackluster entry in this worthy anthology series.

June 1, 2016
Joining Seattle, Memphis, Phoenix, and other noir outposts, St. Louis gets a turn to show its dark side in Phillips' collection of 13 dark tales and a poetic interlude.When they're not providing material for Michael Castro's four short poems, people in the nation's heartland hurt each other for every reason and for practically no reason at all. Sometimes it's just business, as the folks in Chris Barsanti's "The Pillbox," Jason Makansi's "Tracks," and Umar Lee's "A Saint Louis Christmas" know. Sometimes it's what LaVelle Wilkins-Chinn calls "that crazy little thing called love" in "Fool's Luck." Families bring their share of hurt, as S.L. Coney in "Abandoned Places," Laura Benedict in "A Paler Shade of Death," Jedidiah Ayers in "Have You Seen Me," and editor Phillips in "One Little Goddamn Thing" agree. There's revenge, as John Lutz shows in "The Brick Wall." And plain old bad luck, as Colleen J. McElroy attests in "Blues for the River City." Sometimes, finally, it's a combination of all the above, as in Paul D. Marks' "Deserted Cities of the Heart." But whatever the cause, it's all just people. Phillips' collection eschews the professional: readers will search in vain for flatfeet, gumshoes, or other traditional noir heroes. Just plain old folks being plain old ornery in this spirited, black-hearted collection.

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May 1, 2016
Featuring a baker's dozen of original stories, plus one poetic interlude, this new entry in Akashic's globetrotting anthology series explores, as editor Phillips, author of The Ice Harvest, tells us in his introduction, the collision of high and low that makes St. Louis so interesting to crime writers. Although the contributors' list features only one instantly recognizable namethe prolific and award-winning John Lutzthe stories here are uniformly strong. Regular readers of the Noir series (since its inception in 2004, there have been about 75 installments) know what to expect: tightly written, tightly plotted, mostly character-driven stories of murder and mayhem, death and despair, shadow and shock.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)