Boston Noir (Akashic Noir) [Paperback]

Dennis Lehane (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2009 | Series: Akashic Noir

There was only ever one candidate for the job of assembling Boston Noir: Dennis Lehane!

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In the best of the 11 stories in this outstanding entry in Akashic's noir series, characters, plot and setting feed off each other like flames and an arsonist's accelerant. These include Lehane's own Animal Rescue, about a killing resulting from a lost and contested pit bull; John Dufresne's The Cross-Eyed Bear, in which a pedophile priest is caught between the icy representative of the archdiocese and one of his now adult victims; and Don Lee's The Oriental Hair Poets, which charts a literary feud that escalates into a police case. Two populations that define the city for outsiders—the elite WASP Brahmins and the hundreds of thousands of college students surging through to earn their degrees—appear only in passing. While Lehane expresses the fear in his introduction that Boston is becoming beiger, less tribal and gritty and more gentrified and homogenized, this anthology shows that noir can thrive where Raymond Chandler has never set foot. (Nov.)
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From Booklist

The latest in Akashic’s noir anthologies focusing on specific cities—there have been more than 30 of them since the series’ inception in 2004—features 11 original stories, each set in a different Boston neighborhood. In his introduction, editor Lehane calls noir “working-class tragedy,” which is an apt description of these stories. A woman murders her boss over an oft-promised but never-delivered promotion; a man finds a dog in the garbage, adopts it, and winds up exacting punishment on the dog’s abusive former owner; a down-on-his-luck New York musician, forced by his wife to relocate to Boston, finds something very unusual to do to pass the time; a post–World War II private eye is hired by a beautiful woman whose hidden agenda has unexpected results. The stories, written by Lehane and a host of contributors (including Brendan DuBois, Stewart O’Nan, and Jim Fusilli), are uniformly solid, with characters, plots, and atmosphere that evoke the classic noirs of Cain, Woolrich, and Thompson. --David Pitt

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Akashic Books; First Edition edition (November 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933354917
• ISBN-13: 978-1933354910
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.7 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #164,716 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 37 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Cold Night in the Hub November 3, 2009

By The Ginger Man VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

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.

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Boston's Finest October 31, 2009

By Law Student

Format: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.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars "They Fall from Curbs" January 15, 2010

By Sam Sattler TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format: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.