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Noir short stories are clearly the new black at the moment. PARIS NOIR isn't part of the very strong Akashic series, but a companion volume to Maxim Jakubowski's LONDON NOIR, published some years ago by Serpent's Tail. This collection actually has some French writers included, all translated crisply by Ros Schwartz and Lulu Norman. I learned some time ago never to assume you'd have a preponderance of native writers in some of these anthologies (Akashic's DUBLIN NOIR was light on Irish writers and heavy on those who didn't seem to know the city very well, for example). The first law of reviewing short story collections is to expect a mixed bag, with one story that sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb. In PARIS NOIR it's fantasy writer Michael Moorcock's over-long pastiche The Flâneur of Les Arcades de l'Opéra, which features Nazis and time travel. If you enjoy Jasper Fforde, you'll no doubt like it. I don't and didn't. A number of the stories in fact aren't what I'd classify as crime fiction, despite the book's sub-head of 'capital crime fiction.' Ironically, two of the best in the book fall in this category. John Harvey's Minor Key moves between the 1950s and the present day, and features a drug-addled jazz trumpeter and his close group of friends. And John Williams's New Shoes features a ramshackle band of young musicians busking and falling in love on Parisian streets. Short stories seem to fall into three categories – the perfectly-formed gems, those that read like a first chapter to a longer book, and those that seem unfinished. Jason Starr's Bar Fight, featuring an Arab and a policeman, falls into the first category, as does Cara Black's The Redhead, which harks back to the war and the French Resistance. Dominique Manotti's Ethnic Cleansing, one of the best stories in the book, is a disturbing tale of a property developer desperate for some land. Dominique Sylvain's Heatwave has a great narrative voice for its eccentric cop central character who's on the trail of whoever murdered a cyclist. And while it works OK as a short story, the stresses of short-tempered Lieutenant Blaise Reyer and his zen-spouting sidekick Khaled Zaraoui would be entertaining leads for a full-length novel. Jean-Hugues Oppel's Paris Calling has possibilities, based on urban unrest, but feels like an incomplete fragment. Jim Nisbet's Facilis Descensus Averno and its gay rough trade theme goes nowhere. And neither does Stella Duffy's rambling Un Bon Repas Doit Commencer Par La Faim. On the whole PARIS NOIR is worth a read, but I can't help feeling it would have benefited from more French writers with an insider's view of the city. Oh, and two of the stories – Marc Villard's The Lookout and Jake Lamar's Elle et Moi: Le Sacrifice – have that glaring point of view issue that you were taught to avoid in writing classes at the age of 11 (my English teacher at the time quite rightly failed me for doing what they've done!)
Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, July 2008
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