Supernatural Noir [Paperback]

Ellen Datlow (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 22, 2011

A hit man who kills with coincidence... A detective caught in a war between two worlds... A man whose terrible appetites hide an even darker secret... Dark Horse once again teams up with Hugo and Bram Stoker award-winning editor Ellen Datlow (Lovecraft Unbound) to bring you this masterful marriage of the darkness without and the darkness within. Supernatural Noir is an anthology of original tales of the dark fantastic from twenty modern masters of suspense, including Brian Evenson, Joe R. Lansdale, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Nick Mamatas, Gregory Frost, and Jeffrey Ford.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Dark Horse (June 22, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1595825460
• ISBN-13: 978-1595825469
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #765,757 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I've been an editor for over thirty years, first in book publishing, but mostly editing short stories for OMNI Magazine and webzine, EVENT HORIZON, a webzine, and SCIFICTION, the fiction area of SCIFI.COM. I now edit original and reprint anthologies. Born and bred New Yorker, although I travel a lot.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Supernatural tales with a noir touch, June 29, 2011

By 

Pedro Roman (Madrid Spain) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Supernatural Noir (Paperback)

I'm not very fond of the fusion of genres. Every time I read a story that has strange mixtures, I end up just disappointed. For example, swords and laser guns are not easily combined correctly into the same story.

Supernatural Noir is a welcome exception. A collection of 16 short stories which blend the supernatural with the underworld of detectives in dimly lit offices and tough guys in abandoned factories that populate the noir genre.

To me, the best part of anthologies has always been that they allow the reader to discover new authors. It is difficult to keep up with any genre and a good selection of names gets you closer to writers that were beyond your knowledge.

In this anthology there are many great writers, but in addition to that, the choice of tales is not casual or capricious, since the works cover the entire spectrum between the two genres: from the story that is very close to the detective and has only a few strokes of dark fantasy to the story that could almost be described as supernatural, with all the different degrees of "darkness" between.

The quality of the stories is very good and (strangely) there have been none that have disappointed me. Interestingly, I prefer the tales of lesser-known authors ("Ditch Witch"by Lucius Shepard, for example) instead of the stars of the collection (Joe R. Lansdale and his "Dead Sister" and Brian Evenson and "The Absent Eye").

In some stories - the best stories - you enter a complex web and get hooked from beginning to end. When you finish them, you start looking for information about the author, checking if you have more stories and novels set in the same universe and shopping for them.

I think that extension of the anthology beyond the stories that compose it, that discovery of new authors and worlds is the best gift you can give to a reader.

And Supernatural Noir contains a few of those gifts.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Supernatural Noir, July 5, 2011

By 

Brendan Moody (Randolph, ME, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Supernatural Noir (Paperback)

My late father read a lot of mystery and detective stories, but I've never been much interested in them. I read Sue Grafton because the character of Kinsey Millhone amuses me, but otherwise I'm unlikely to pick up a piece of crime fiction. Nonetheless, I admire the noir sensibility, which in the hands of the right writer can explore urban grimness and psychological dysfunction in a way that no other fiction can. Ellen Datlow's new anthology takes that sensibility and adds a dark twist. The protagonists of these sixteen stories must face not only human infirmities but deeper, more inexplicable terrors. Mobsters and monsters, gunmen and ghouls: the world of Supernatural Noir is indeed an unpleasant one.

The protagonists and scenarios and the anthology are often familiar from non-supernatural noir: a relative seeking revenge for a murdered innocent, criminals who find themselves unable to escape the acts they've left behind, private detectives caught up in events beyond their understanding. In a few of the lesser stories, the authors can't quite enliven these tropes, and the attempt at a hard-bitten voice with insight into the sorrows of life falls flat, feels almost maudlin. In the main, though, there's enough craft and imagination to give the stories bite.

In Paul G. Tremblay's "The Getaway," four criminals who think they've escaped a robbery discover that somehow, impossibly, they haven't. The mysterious and sudden nature of the fate that finds them makes this story eerier than a more straightforward menace would have, and the narrator's understatedly sad family background contributes to the tragic atmosphere. Offering another well-rounded protagonist, Richard Bowes uses a detective with a connection to otherworldly wars to reinvigorate the sense of the indifferent universe that haunts much noir fiction, in the story "Mortal Bait." And Melanie Tem introduces the reader to a tough-as-nails young woman with an unlikely job and an even more unlikely gift in "Little S--t," a story about loneliness, depravity, survival, and social work. (I've censored the title of that last story to make it acceptable for Amazon.com; the word in question appears uncensored in the book.)

While some stories stick too close to traditional noir to distinguish themselves, others spin striking variations on it. Caitlin R. Kiernan's "The Maltese Unicorn" might sound like a spoof, and if I told you what the title object was you'd probably laugh, but the story creates its own world and makes it credible, and Kiernan captures the dry humor and laconic voice of noir perfectly, adding her own brand of weird transcendence. Elizabeth Bear's "The Romance" might, by a strict accounting, not be noir at all, but its story of a birthday party and a carousel makes a nice contrast with those around it, and the conclusion is, if not noir, in the same thematic ballpark.

Even the weaker stories in Supernatural Noir are eminently readable, solid tales both of crime and of the dark fantastic, and the prose styles are true to the hard edge of noir without becoming monotonous. For fans of horror open to noir, and readers of noir who can handle horror, this is a fine anthology, coherent, atmospheric, and compelling. Two kinds of bleak, cynical, stylish fiction at once: what's not to like?

[I was sent a review copy of this book by the publisher.]

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My favorite anthology of the year so far., July 13, 2011

By 

Wag The Fox (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Supernatural Noir (Paperback)

The ARC of this anthology came at the perfect time, as my reading tastes this spring and summer have been tuned to the noir and dark fantasy genres. So, to see a slew of authors each offer up short stories with a blending of elements from both genres, with Ellen Datlow expertly compiling the stories together, well ... let's just say this might have been the perfect summer read for me this year.

Now, being an anthology, this book offers up a mixed bag, even if does seem like the theme narrows the borders in which the authors can play. The truth is that noir fiction can be pretty damned diverse, and throwing in a supernatural bent only offers more freedom. It boils down to tone, I suppose. In any case, an anthologist like Ellen Datlow is about as reliable as they get when it comes to getting the best from the best.

Right off the bat I was charmed by a gritty heist story by Paul Tremblay called "The Getaway." A getaway driver speeds his cohorts out of town after a botched robbery, only to find the leader of the pack isn't in the car anymore. He's just disappeared, and the rest start to wonder just what the guy they robbed might have had to do with it. This was had a good deal of tension and a cool bit of paranoia.

A great little tale of the wayward soul seeking redemption came from Jeffrey Ford's "The Last Triangle." A washed-out addict winds up at the end of his rope and going through a rough bit of rehab in an old woman's house. But she doesn't throw him out, and instead recruits him into helping her investigate a mystery involving some rune-like symbols graffitied around town. The dichotomy of the two characters felt familiar, but the magical flavoring and Ford's way of moving the story along made it feel unique. Quite liked this one.

After that came Laird Barron's "The Carrion Gods in Their Heaven." Young women hiding out in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, hiding out from the law and the men in their lives, are swept up in a local legend and an animal hide with some powers that imbue through whoever wears it. A damned strange story with an ending that really packed a punch. It wound up being one of my favorites from the bunch.

A bit of a quirky one came from Joe Lansdale's "Dead Sister," which had a fella hired by an alluring woman to find out who is digging up her sister's grave each night. I found this one creepy as heck, but with an odd bit of humor to it that kept the rather macabre subject matter from being too gruesome.

Those are just a few samples of what you can expect from the anthology. Sufficed to say that I didn't really find any of them to be a disappointment, and I was really happy to finally get a chance to sample the works of some authors I've not read from yet, but have heard tons of praise for. It's just about as good as I could ask for from a themed anthology and I hope there is second volume sometime down the road. I suspect Supernatural Noir could be a wellspring of stories if this batch is any indication.