Chicago Noir

This much is clear: Akashic Books is on a roll. With the publishing of their fourth anthology of Noir tales, the publishing house is quickly securing their reputation as having a good eye for both desired topics and authors to supply that demand. How else does one explain the amazing stories collected in Chicago Noir, a book that is less about Chicago as it is about writers who are in tune with the art of true storytelling. Chicago Noir follows the tradition of Akashic Books' Brooklyn Noir and San Francisco Noir in offering tales of shady characters, double dealings, gun molls and violent deaths in and around one select city or location; this time Chicago. But while not all of the tales have a Chicago flavor even in the least bit, the stories themselves do manage to live up to the flavor of noir. [...]Bayo Ojikutu's The Gospel of Moral Ends, while well intentioned, belongs in another book altogether, which is to say that overall Chicago Noir burns as hot and brilliant as the Chicago Fire-even if editor Neal Pollack, who does a fantastic job here as editor, no longer lives in the Windy City.

I enjoyed Chicago Noir quite a bit. Its broad array of authors offer a refreshing take on the well-worn noir genre. While there's still plenty of moral ambiguities, cliffhanger plot twists and sudden acts of senseless violence to please the most devoted fans of traditional noir, the writers come up with some interesting new angles. A very enjoyable effort overall.

I think CHICAGO NOIR tries to redefine what noir might mean in 2005, and does a fine job avoiding the hard-boiled cliches of the 1930's. The short fiction is well written and takes the reader into many places that might not be considered tradionally noir. I think the above reviewer, Jerry Saperstein, needs to lighten up and let modernity flow. His president is certainly having a hard time with that himself.