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Summary
Summary
Following the success of the award-winning bestseller Brooklyn Noir, this is the third volume in Akashic's grounbreaking series of original noir anthologies. This volume is set in San Francisco, the city that put film noir on the map. Barry Gifford, Kate Braverman, Michelle Tea and Jon Longhi are just a few of the stellar cast that Maravelis has coralled into this brilliant collection of haunting noir in the city shrouded by fog.
Author Notes
Peter Maravelis is a native San Franciscan with a life-long involvement in the art and literary scenes. He programs the events calendar at City Lights Bookstore and is editor of the first volume of San Francisco Noir. He's been known to occasionally moonlight with PIs. He was the editor of the first volume of San Francisco Noir.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A roster of Bay Area authors lends solid street cred to 15 original stories, but few deliver on the elusive noir premise of this new series. Following the success of Brooklyn Noir (2004), Akashic has launched a set of anthologies in which each story takes place in a distinct neighborhood in a different city. In his introduction, Maravelis perhaps overcomplicates the idea when he asks, "What happens when the history of a city begins to disappear? What happens to literature when it feeds upon the ruins of amnesia?" Most of the stories-by Alejandro Murgu!a, Kate Braverman and others-feel as if they were written for a general literary anthology, all good enough but hardly satisfying as noir. Contemporary noir titan Jim Nisbet especially disappoints, with a vaguely science fictional vignette about a futuristic suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge. Saving the day, Domenic Stansberry and Eddie Muller deliver genuinely haunting noir fiction, Michelle Tea does a nice modern-day homage to the form, and Peter Plate nails down the violently absurd Willefordian side of the genre with a tale about a Bad Santa knocking over a pot club. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
Dust off those black-and-white TVs. The success of Akashic Books's Brooklyn Noir anthology has spawned a series of successors, of which these are just two. Both are geographically focused and contain original stories by emerging writers. Of the two, San Francisco Noir gets the nod, if only because it seems closer to its noir roots. David Corbett's "It Can Happen" delivers a tightly plotted story of family inheritance that would fit neatly into the pages of Black Mask. Reflecting changing conditions, multicultural authors are well represented here, and female writers definitely make their mark. Kate Braverman's wittily observed tale of the love/hate relationship between two Sex and the City types is topped only by Michelle Tea's story of a prostitute who just can't say enough about her Bernal Heights hideaway. Eddie Muller shows off his noir bona fides in a pitch-perfect story of a long day that ends on a lucky note. The Chicago volume pays homage to the city's musical, criminal, and gritty past, with strong efforts by Joe Meno, Kevin Guilfoile, and Neal Pollack. Each might have served as the basis for a Twilight Zone episode. Promised future volumes include one on Washington, DC, edited by George Pelacanos, and one on Dublin, edited by Ken Bruen. There's enough here to cause us to want more. For all larger public libraries.-Bob Lunn, Kansas City P.L., MO (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Introduction | p. 13 |
| Part I Edge City | |
| The Prison | p. 19 |
| It Can Happen | p. 35 |
| Double Espresso | p. 59 |
| After Hours at La Chinita | p. 84 |
| Part II In Memoriam to Identity | |
| The Neutral Zone | p. 97 |
| Le Rouge et le Noir | p. 121 |
| Larry's Place | p. 151 |
| The Other Barrio | p. 170 |
| Part III Neo-Noir | |
| Genesis to Revelation | p. 195 |
| Deception of the Thrush | p. 201 |
| Weight Less Than Shadow | p. 217 |
| Fixed | p. 227 |
| Part IV Flowers of Romance | |
| Briley Boy | p. 247 |
| Kid's Last Fight | p. 252 |
| Confessions of a Sex Maniac | p. 264 |
| About the Contributors | p. 294 |
