|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
|
Product Description
Product Description
There was only ever one candidate for the job of assembling Boston Noir: Dennis Lehane!
About the Author
Dennis Lehane is the author of the New York Times bestseller Mystic River; Prayers for Rain; Gone, Baby, Gone; Sacred; Darkness, Take My Hand; A Drink Before the War, which won the Shamus Award for Best First Novel; and, most recently, The Given Day. A native of Dorchester, Massachusetts, he splits his time between the Boston area and Florida.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.ca
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.9 out of 5 stars (16 customer reviews)
29 of 31 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Cold Night in the Hub, Nov 3 2009
By The Ginger Man - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Boston Noir (Paperback)
In the book's introduction, Lehane adds his own twist to a description of the noir genre. He argues that it represents uniquely working class tragedy, a story of loss and of people who are unable to roll with the changing times. "No art form that I know of," submits Lehane, "rages against the machine more violently than noir." He adds, however, that the Boston locations in this volume add an unexpected strain of humor to the mix.Although the entries are a bit uneven, I found some of them very entertaining. In just a few pages of the first story, Lynne Heitman sets the mood, creates dramatic tension and builds a nice visual image of the Financial District office in which the action occurs. A woman who is passed over for a job has shot her boss and is holding her rival hostage. The author manages simultaneously to create a feeling of sympathy and vague dislike for the captive businessman. The author saves her best lines to describe the woman with the gun: "This suit has never really fit, and the dark blue Tahari would have hidden the blood stains better."
Dennis Lehane's story features a confrontation between small time hoods in Dorchester. The story has atmosphere, compelling characters and classic noir visuals like: "The street signs and window panes rattled, and Bob thought how winter lost any meaning the day you last rode a sled. Any meaning but grey."
My other favorite was Brendan DuBois' Dark Island. Locales in the story include Scollay Square, the waterfront and one of the small islands off the coast of the city. In a staple beginning of the genre, a mysterious woman walks into the office of a gumshoe. She is pretty, needs help and is not what she seems.
These stories takes place in various locations in and around Boston (Beacon Hill, the North End, Watertown) and are from different time periods (colonial, post WW II, the sixties). I like the genre, am a fan of Lehane and come from Boston. For me, this book was a nice blend of all three.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
"They Fall from Curbs", Jan 15 2010
By Sam Sattler - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Boston Noir (Paperback)
"Boston Noir" is, by my count, the thirty-fourth book in a series of darkish short story collections set in major cities around the world. Each of the featured cities has distinct enough a personality to set a unique tone for its particular volume, even, at times becoming as much a character in the stories as the chief protagonists themselves.This particular volume is home to eleven short stories, some of which have been written by authors already well known to genre readers and others by lesser known writers. Dennis Lehane contributes both the book's introduction and a story entitled "Animal Rescue" about a seemingly simple man with an unexpected hard edge to him. Other contributors include: Stewart O'Nan, Lynne Heitman, Jim Fusilli, Patricia Powell and John Dufresne.
The stories have a tough, sometimes depressing, tone to them but they are kept lighter than they otherwise would have been by the bits of ironic humor that sneak into them when least expected. Even readers unfamiliar with the term "noir," will be tempted to explore the collection after reading Lehane's definition of what it takes to be a "noir hero" - "In Shakespeare, tragic heroes fall from mountaintops; in noir, they fall from curbs. Tragic heroes die in a blaze of their own ill-advised conflation. Noir heroes die clutching fences or crumpled in trunks or, in the case of poor Eddie Coyle, they simply doze off drunkenly in a car and take one in the back of the head before they have a chance to wake up again. No wise words, no music swelling on the soundtrack."
These are stories about white collar people who finally reach their breaking point; people who see an opportunity to stick it to the system and grab the chance to do so; people eager to profit from the deaths of others; hard people that suffer because of soft hearts; inept criminals who somehow manage to bluff their way through; and the worst kind of sex predator - something for everyone.
Stories collected from so many different writers will, of course, vary in quality, and those gathered in "Boston Noir" are no exception to that rule. What is rather unusual, unfortunately, is that the quality of these stories range all the way from very effective to almost incomprehensible, meaning that most readers are likely to consider "Boston Noir" to be, at best, an average collection of short stories.
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Boston's Finest, Oct 31 2009
By Law Student - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Boston Noir (Paperback)
This gem of a book is worth every penny. Each story is set in a different part of Boston and its suburbs. The authors who contribute to this book are the creme de la creme of contemporary mystery writers, including Dennis Lehane, Stewart O'Nan and Brendan DuBois. This is perfect bedtime reading for anyone who loves the city of Boston, its quirks, its culture, its people and its flavor. You won't be disappointed.
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
