From Publishers Weekly
While few of the names in the 10th entry in the city noir anthology series that began with
Brooklyn Noir (2004) will be familiar to American readers (where, for example, are Robert Barnard and John Harvey?), by way of compensation eight of the 17 contributions focus on punk rock. Ken Bruen, best known for his native Dublin settings, offers a sharp jab to the gut in "Loaded." Michael Ward's "I Fought the Lawyer" profiles one of the worst blackmail schemes ever devised. Unsworth's tale, "Trouble Is a Lonesome Town," riffs nicely on the seedy PI who gets in over his head. Martyn Waites's "Love" is a frightening portrait of a skinhead recruit. Joolz Denby's "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi" effectively traces the arc of would-be punk stars from the country trying to find fame in the big city. If this volume doesn't match the quality of the best in the series, there are still pleasures to be found, especially for those into the contemporary London music scene.
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Product Description
The city of William Blake and Jack the Ripper; the Bow Street Runners and The Krays; Bedlam and Newgate; the Pistols and the Clash - London is the ancient capital of crime. "London Noir" is an A-Z of what lies beneath the official city maps. It takes you on a tour from the mythic East End, where modern day gangsters hide behind a political front; to the bohemian West, where priests pray and police prey on their flocks. In the North unearthly sacrifices are taking place to terrible Gods and in the South strange beasts emerge from beneath the concrete walkways. This is a London of dream and nightmare, shadows and fog. Some of your tour guides have soundtracked the city before; some of them are new voices. All of them are fuelled by the forces of the metropolis, guided by the voices of police and thieves, conmen and pornographers, witchdoctors and clergymen, the great and good and the down and dirty.
