Detroit Noir

September 24, 2007
While the many fans of Akashic's consistently high-quality series might have expected the Motor City to be tapped sooner (maybe before the Twin Cities), they will find the delay well worth the wait. Few cities are as well suited to the genre as Detroit, with its embattled inner city and history of urban decline and blight, and the editors have assembled a talented lineup to do it justice with 16 original short stories. The always superb Loren D. Estleman starts the anthology off on a high note with his spare hard-boiled whodunit short, “Kill the Cat.” The constantly simmering background threat of violence informs two very different but equally accomplished tales: Joyce Carol Oates's “Panic” and Detroit Free Press
columnist Desiree Cooper's “Night Coming.” The editors also include some well-done period pieces, like the 1950s-era “The Coffee Break” by Detroit News
business editor Melissa Preddy, and their discerning selections maintain Akashic's excellent track record.

November 1, 2007
Blues can evoke music, mood, and more, and the 21 stories in "Chicago Blues" display the work of some of Chicago's finest mystery writers. Most haunting are those that celebrate the blues as music, including Stuart Kaminsky's "Blue Note," in which a man plays high-stakes poker to prevent the maiming of his blues-singing mother. Longtime series protagonists are featured in tales from Sara Paretsky, Kris Nelscott, J.A. Konrath, and Max Allan Collins, while entries by Barbara D'Amato, David J. Walker, and Michael Allen Dymmoch star cops who may be crooked but are loyal to their own. Superior to "Chicago Noir" (Akashic, 2005), this should be of interest beyond the Second City area.

Motor City, Motown, Murder City: Detroit's varied faces are revealed in "Detroit Noir"'s 16 stories by natives and/or city residents. A PI looking for a missing teen discoversand solvesa multiple murder in Loren Estleman's "Kill the Cat." In "Pride" by P.J. Parrish (actually sisters Kris Montee and Kelly Nichols), a female police detective finds her own justice. A man driving his family behind a school bus in Joyce Carol Oates's "Panic" learns that potential violence can be life-changing as well. As these tales reveal, there is murder in even the best neighborhoods. But one of the most memorable entries"Hey Love" by Detroit middle school teacher Roger K. Johnsoncelebrates the Motown label.

Credit Cuban-born Obejas ("Days of Awe") with "Havana Noir"; she edited and introduced it, translated 12 of the 18 stories, and wrote the longest one, about an American "pet foreigner" in Havana who threatens to interfere in a local family's affairs. The cumulative work of these writers (half living in Cuba, most of the others born there) describes a country of (mostly) have-nots, struggling with the rationing imposed after the revolution and doing what they must to survive, usually outside the law. Most poignant are "The Dinner" by Carolina Garcia-Aguilera, with its O. Henry-like twist, and "The Scene" by Mylene Fernandez Pintado, featuring a woman caring for her dying mother; most chilling are Mariela Varona Roque's stylish "The Orchid," about a child murderer, and Ena Lucia Portela's "The Last Passenger," describing an anonymous woman's relationship with a serial killer. Noir at its darkest.

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.