Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics (v. 2) [Paperback]

Tim McLoughlin (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2005

On the heels of the stunning success of the Summer '04 award-winning bestseller Brooklyn Noir, this second volume digs deeper into the criminal history of New York's punchiest and most alluring borough. Brooklyn Noir 2 offers short stories by the classic authors who blazed the path for the success of the first volume, which award-winning mystery author Laura Lippman called, "a stunningly perfect combination . . . the writing is flat-out superb, filled with lines that will sing in your head for a long time to come." Brooklyn Noir was featured in every media outlet in New York City (including two New York Times features and an appearance on the Leonard Lopate NPR radio show), as well as publications and media all across the country (and the UK, Australia, Italy, etc.).

Once again in Brooklyn Noir 2, each story is set in a distinct Brooklyn neighborhood and mixes masters of genre with some of the best literary fiction writers to ever set foot in the borough. These brilliant and chilling stories see crime striking in communities of Russians, Jamaicans, Puerto Ricans, Italians, Irish, and many other ethnicities--in the most diverse urban location on the planet.

Contributors:H.P. Lovecraft, Lawrence Block, Donald Westlake, Pete Hamill, Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead, Carolyn Wheat, Thomas Wolfe, Hubert Selby, Jr., Stanley Ellin, Gilbert Sorrentino, Maggie Estep, Salvatore La Puma, and Irwin Shaw.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Brooklyn Noir (2004)^B featured originals, but here, McLoughlin mines reprints, allowing him to pay tribute to "all the great stories that had given me the idea for such a book in the first place." These 13 Brooklyn-centric stories are slotted into the volume 1 categories ("Old School," "New School," "Cops and Robbers," and "Backwater Brooklyn") but with authors as wildly diverse as H. P. Lovecraft, Hubert Selby Jr., Donald E. Westlake, and Jonathan Lethem. (Pete Hamill and Maggie Estep make return appearances.) It's certainly possible to argue whether Lethem and Estep belong in a volume of "classics," or even whether the book is appropriately named (continuing the devaluation of the word noir, here it's a generic "dark fiction"). But, though stylistically scattershot, this is good stuff, from Lovecraft's baroque "The Horror at Red Hook" to Selby's "Tralala" (one of the stories in Last Exit to Brooklyn) to "By the Dawn's Early Light," a great Matt Scudder story by Lawrence Block. Terrific appeal for Brooklynites, but may seem an odd mix to the rest of the country. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Publisher

BROOKLYN NOIR is back with a vengeance, this time with the masters of yore: H.P. Lovecraft, Lawrence Block, Donald Westlake, Pete Hamill, Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead, Irwin Shaw, Carolyn Wheat, Thomas Wolfe, Hubert Selby, Stanley Ellin, Gilbert Sorrentino, Maggie Estep, and Salvatore La Puma.

Awards & Praise for the first BROOKLYN NOIR anthology:

BROOKLYN NOIR is an EDGAR AWARD Finalist for "The Book Signing" by Pete Hamill, and winner of the MWA's ROBERT L. FISH MEMORIAL AWARD for "Can't Catch Me" by Thomas Morrissey.

BROOKLYN NOIR stories "When All This Was Bay Ridge" by Tim McLoughlin and "Case Closed" by Lou Manfredo have both been selected for BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2005 edited by Joyce Carol Oates and Otto Penzler.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: Akashic Books; Leaning Spine edition (June 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1888451769
• ISBN-13: 978-1888451764
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #561,528 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dear, dirty Brooklyn, July 9, 2006

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Old Dog "Expatiation" (The Hill Country, NY) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics (v. 2) (Paperback)

Superior to Manhattan Noir and Bklyn Noir 1. Ranges from the elegant (and enraged) H. P. Lovecraft (originally from Rhode Island, so what can you expect?) to Selby's dreamy, slick brutalities (a prose style halfway between Henry Miller's and William Burroughs's). Brooklyn (being Brooklyn) allows for the fine-tuning of realism in the canon of American prose styles. Wolfe's attempt to reproduce Brooklyn speech fails pitifully (just as do Hollywood's attempts to suggest Southern speech), but Selby's waterfront Brooklyn of WW 2 succeeds (see the German film production of LAST EXIT: is that Jennifer Jason Leigh as the perky, scrofulous siren of the Bklyn waterfront?). Unfortunately, Flatbush is totally absent (as it is in Bklyn Noir 1). During WW 1, Flatbush was the epitome of middle-class American aspirations ("When it's nesting time in Flatbush..."). Miller's Death of a Salesman comes out of Flatbush, as do portions of Malamud and Edmund Wilson ("Princess with the Golden Hair"). And don't forget Woody Allen. Somehow, both vols of Bklyn Noir omit this fertile enclave. Essential reading for students of American literature.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brooklyn Noir 2: the Classics, November 9, 2006

By 

Lewis McLean (Harleysvile, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics (v. 2) (Paperback)

Interesting concept...a follow-up to the excellent Brooklyn Noir 1 with a collection of "classic" short stories ranging in tone from H.P. Lovecraft's stately "Horror at Red Hook" to Hubert Selby's torrid "Talala"
(an excerpt from "Last Exit to Brooklyn"). Something here to please everyone, but not everything to everyone's taste. Not quite as entertaining as the original BN1 but the stories are well chosen and varied in style, a worthy addition to the Noir collections.