Manhattan Noir [Paperback]

Fortunately, I did not read Manhattan Noir until shortly after returning from my first visit to Manhattan, a five day stay in a brownstone on Broadway in Harlem not too far south of Washington Heights. I had been told that crime had dramatically decreased in recent years, but nonetheless I had some early misgivings. The stories compiled by Lawrence Block in this anthology would have been anything but reassuring.

For the record Wikipedia statistics show that the actual homicide rate in New York City for 2007 ranks it 50 in American cities with a population over 250,000. New Orleans, St. Louis, Detroit, and Washington D.C. are one, two, three, and four.

The settings - Midtown, Lower East Side, Upper West Side, Battery Park, and so on - would have been recognizable place names, but ones without any emotional content. That changed entirely after just five days in Manhattan. My heart beat faster whenever I encountered a familiar place, street, or subway line in Manhattan Noir.

These stories were written specifically for this collection at the urging of Lawrence Block. They are all quite good, some clearly exceptional. Most are crime stories; most involve violence, but violence is not necessarily the central theme of each story.

Two early stories were among my favorites; The Good Samaritan (Midtown), and If You Can't Stand the Heat (Clinton, or Hell's Kitchen). The last sentence in the latter story is, "Wherever she went, she was pretty sure she'd feel safe". Nonetheless, murder is front and center.

I was disoriented in Rain (moving from Battery Park to 112th and Broadway) as the downpour shifted from place to place, from character to character, from subplot to subplot. It all came together in a second reading, thereby becoming a new favorite. "The rain falls on intrigue and conspiracy, trap doors, underground escape routes, the crude implements of quick getaways."

The longest story, A Nice Place to Visit (Hell's Kitchen again), twists and turns with double-dealings, betrayals, murder, and retribution. The Upper West Side reveals its own gruesome secret in The Laundry Room, not one of my favorites, but one decidedly difficult to forget. The Most Beautiful Apartment in New York (Chelsea) offers a mix of greed, jealousy, murder, humor, and irony while Freddie Prinze is My Guardian Angel (Washington Heights) blends fantasy and noir. (In my limited experience I encountered immigrants from the Dominican Republic rather than Puerto Rico in Washington Heights, possibly indicative of recent demographic changes.)

Manhattan Noir is a good collection. Thankfully, it is classified as fiction.

Let's face it: most short-story anthologies contain a few winners, a larger number of passable stories, and at least a few clinkers. The most remarkable attribute of "Manhattan Noir" is its sustained high quality; there are no duds at all. Sure, some of these stories are stronger than others, but every one is worth reading.

The collection is also notable for its variety of tone. Stories such as Charles Ardai's "The Good Samaritan" and Thomas H. Cook's "Rain" capture the classical noir spirit. Jeffery Deaver's "A Nice Place to Visit" is an elaborate con game with a particularly satisfying conclusion. On the more Hitchcockian side, we have fine entries by Carol Lea Benjamin ("The Last Supper") and John Lutz ("The Laundry Room"). There are also some genuinely touching stories, especially Xu Xi's "Crying with Audrey Hepburn," featuring a modern-day Susan Alexander Kane.

Highly recommended for fans of noir and urban fiction. I will be seeking out the other books in Akashic's Noir series.

Manhattan Noir is absolutely brilliant. I loved every story in this clever collection of noir tales. It's just a clever premise, each story set in a certain clearly-defined neighborhood in Manhattan, peopled with the kinds of unsavory characters you would find in these neighborhoods. I highly recommend that anyone who enjoys noir fiction, or gritty tales set in urban settings -- or just anyone who enjoys short stories in general -- read Manhattan Noir. This collection was so well-done, I want to read the rest of Akashic's "Noir" series, I hope they are as fabulous as this one was for me.

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