Customer Reviews

Supernatural Noir

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.]

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.

"Supernatural" and "Noir." Not two genres you would normally put together--especially since one deals with witches and magic and the other deals almost exclusively with the detective story sub-genre. Put them together and you get Supernatural Noir, a collection of 16 stories that attempt to examine the human condition by placing their subjects in mysterious, fantastical, and quite often horrifying circumstances. The trouble is, each author interprets this new genre differently. All pieces contain noir to some degree, but the genres of the collection overall aren't well balanced. Some stories lean more towards fantasy/horror, while others are so bare of these elements that you almost miss the required "supernatural" aspect. The best stories, in my opinion, are the ones that focus more on what makes these characters human than the fantasy/horror elements. Some in the collection do this quite well. Others are more intent on fleshing out plot-driven tales. It's really up to the reader to decide who hit the nail on the head, and who missed completely. A word of warning: this is not for the casual fan of dark fantasy and horror. Some of the pieces are very strange, and more than a little morbid. Recommended for mature readers, as some pieces may contain adult themes.

It doesn't matter how you like your supernatural tales. Modern, retro, a touch of gothic... there's a little bit of everything in this collection of short stories. Just don't be surprised when you end up going back over some of the stories just to figure out everything, though.

Dark Horse has really outdone itself with this book. Like I said above, you'll find a lot to like in this collection. You'll find some stories that you'll just go batty over, others that you won't be able to peel your eyes away from. I have to admit that I wasn't expecting some of the resolutions here in these stories & I love that they threw me for a loop. It's no fun when you can predict everything that happens & you don't get that here. The Absent Eye ended up being one of my favorite stories & I just really hope that the author (Brian Evenson) does more with this story. It (like some of the others) had a lot of potential to be developed into one or several books.

However, as is the case with any collection of stories, you'll find the ones that you just weren't into. I have to admit that I just wasn't drawn into Caitlin Kiernan's short story, although I will admit that it was well written. (I can either take or leave her stuff.) Others were just a little too surreal for my tastes.

There was more here that I liked than disliked, so I highly recommend that you try this book out. It'll probably end up being overlooked by many, but this really is an excellent collection of stories.

4 out of 5 stars

(ARC provided by Netgalley)

I enjoy detective noir, I like dark fantasy, but I dislike horror. I bought this anthology believing it would be riffs on classic noir with fantasy elements. A few stories are like that. In Joe R. Lansdale's "Dead Sister," a bottle blonde hires a broke PI to investigate who is nightly digging up, then reburying, the body of the blonde's gorgeous deceased sister--and why they are doing it. In Caitlin R. Kiernan's "The Maltese Unicorn," a psychic bookseller tracks down an extremely rare (and bizarre) stolen artifact. Jeffrey's Ford's "The Last Triangle" is a fantasy story about redemption--neither noir nor horror. Lucius Shepard's "Ditch Witch" is a dark fantasy that ensures its drug-addled protagonist will never look at garden gnomes in the same way again--but it's not noir.

However, most of the stories are straightforward horror. Their only connection to noir is that people die in very gruesome ways and/or the stories have horrific, creeping atmospheres. I suggest that readers merely expecting new riffs on dectective noir avoid this anthology. It's not worth wading through the entire book to find the very small number of stories that fit into that category. On the other hand, people who want more of the same old kinds of horror will enjoy the entire book.