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MANHATTAN NOIR
by Lawrence Block, editor
Akashic Books, April 2006
257 pages
$14.95
ISBN: 1888451955


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

MANHATTAN NOIR, one of the series of regional noir books published by Akashic Books, contains 15 short stories, each of which takes part in a different section of Manhattan, 'the City' to most New Yorkers. The subway in Brooklyn even indicates the direction of the train by the signs, 'To the City' and 'From the City' whereas The Bronx, where I grew up, only says 'Uptown' and 'Downtown'.

The stories range from Battery Park to Inwood, from the Lower East Side to the George Washington Bridge, and are as varied as the neighborhoods they inhabit. All the authors live or have lived in New York, so they know the city well. Some of the neighborhoods are better defined than others, but all the stories are enough to make an expatriate New Yorker homesick.

Thomas H Cook gives us a spooky story of New York in the rain. It's listed as a Battery Park tale, but it spans the whole of the island. (For those of you whose geography is worse than mine, New York City consists of five counties, or boroughs, as they are called. All are islands or are on islands except The Bronx which is attached to the mainland of the US).

Maan Meyers (Marty and Annette Meyers) give us a story about an Italian organ grinder on the lower East Side at a time when immigrants were flooding into the US but with many of the same problems as they face today.

CJ Sullivan introduces us to an ageing boxer in Inwood and Justin Scott gives us a tale of ghosts in Chelsea, while Jeffery Deaver tells of a scam gone bad in Hell's Kitchen.

The stories vary in quality and not all can be considered noir, but the authors give us a diverse portrait of New York and New Yorkers. My major quibble with the book is that it is arranged by alphabetical order of the authors when a better choice would have been a geographical division.

Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, April 2006

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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