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BRONX NOIR
by S. J. Rozan (editor)
Akashic Books, August 2007
361 pages
$15.95
ISBN: 1933354259


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

I grew up in The Bronx – first on Longfellow Avenue, althoughI don't remember anything about that, then on Crotona Park East. I remember visiting my grandmother who lived a bit east of us on Seabury Place and skating on the lake in the park in the winter (even falling in once!) In 1943, we moved to Wythe Place, just west of the Grand Concourse at 171st Street, I went to Taft High School, Hunter College in The Bronx (now Lehman College) and got my MA from CCNY. I think my Bronx street cred is acceptable.

However, The Bronx in BRONX NOIR is not The Bronx I grew up in. When I was growing up, a kid was reasonably safe. One could walk to school or ride the subways without fear. It was a place that had libraries, a movie palace, a world-class zoo and a botanical garden, and major department stores, but yet a place where a kid would ride a bike without worries or go to the movies alone on a Saturday afternoon to see two features, cartoons and coming attractions.

The Bronx portrayed in most of these stories is dark and mean and dangerous. Although a renascence has come to Brooklyn and Queens (and the middle classes never vacated Staten Island), it is only just starting in The Bronx. The streets are full of prostitutes and drug dealers and all sorts of evil, if we are to believe most of these stories. There are holocaust survivors (Hey Girlie by Joanne Dobson) and old Italian families (The Woman Who Hated the Bronx by Rita Lakin and The Prince of Arthur Avenue by Patrick W Picciarelli) who never left.

Some of the stories are more horrifying than others. I could barely read Joseph Wallace's story (The Big Five) set in the Bronx Zoo. The Riker's Island one is very depressing (Lost and Found by Thomas Bentil). The last section, containing Ed Dee's story of the horny mounted policeman ( Ernie K's Gelding) and Thomas Adcock's tale of the assassination reality show producer (You Want I Should Whack Monkey Boy) are funny in the context of the rest of the stories in the book.

All in all, this is an excellent collection of short stories set in the only county in New York City actually on the mainland of the US (and containing the only two true rivers in the City – the others are all estuaries). Read and enjoy, but don't do so on a stormy night.

Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, August 2007

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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