Books
San Francisco Noir

by Peter Maravelis, ed.
Akashic Books, October 2005, $15.95

If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to carry a hip flask in your pocket—all the better to wash the gritty taste of doom out of your mouth after reading this collection of satisfyingly bleak tales of desperation and despair among the damned of the City by the Bay.

Possibly inspired by the success of Kerry Schooley and Peter Sellers' Canuck Noir trilogy and their own Brooklyn Noir collection from a few years ago, NYC's tiny Akashic Books has launched an ambitious series of regional dark crime tales, with future volumes promised for DC, Baltimore, LA, London and Miami, among others. The results so far have all been suitably impressive, and this latest volume boasts an equally impressive range of contributors, not just the usual local crime writing suspects (Barry Gifford, David Corbett, Domenic Stansberry, Jim Nisbet and Will Christopher Baer) but also some solid yarns from former prostitutes, squatters, poets and private eyes, each giving us a street level view of a place full of, as editor Peter Maravelis assures us in his over-heated introduction, "broken dreams, shattered lives and deadly liasons." Sin Soracco's "Double Expresso" is a stand-out, a richly detailed yarn about a confused female ex-con trying to escape the pull of the city, only to be pulled back by her own demons, while Eddie Muller's "Kid's Last Fight " is a twisted tale about a sociopathic Asian gang member out to make his bones, a distracted Yuppie shopper and an aging former boxer who possibly took a few too many shots to the head—all on a collision course. Pruning shears figure prominently, and you'll both laugh and cry at the ending. A real San Francisco treat.

Kevin Burton Smith

If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to carry a hip flask in your pocket—all the better to wash the gritty taste of doom out of your mouth after reading this collection of satisfyingly bleak tales of desperation and despair among the damned of the City by the Bay.

Possibly inspired by the success of Kerry Schooley and Peter Sellers' Canuck Noir trilogy and their own Brooklyn Noir collection from a few years ago, NYC's tiny Akashic Books has launched an ambitious series of regional dark crime tales, with future volumes promised for DC, Baltimore, LA, London and Miami, among others. The results so far have all been suitably impressive, and this latest volume boasts an equally impressive range of contributors, not just the usual local crime writing suspects (Barry Gifford, David Corbett, Domenic Stansberry, Jim Nisbet and Will Christopher Baer) but also some solid yarns from former prostitutes, squatters, poets and private eyes, each giving us a street level view of a place full of, as editor Peter Maravelis assures us in his over-heated introduction, "broken dreams, shattered lives and deadly liasons." Sin Soracco's "Double Expresso" is a stand-out, a richly detailed yarn about a confused female ex-con trying to escape the pull of the city, only to be pulled back by her own demons, while Eddie Muller's "Kid's Last Fight " is a twisted tale about a sociopathic Asian gang member out to make his bones, a distracted Yuppie shopper and an aging former boxer who possibly took a few too many shots to the head—all on a collision course. Pruning shears figure prominently, and you'll both laugh and cry at the ending. A real San Francisco treat.

Super User
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by Peter Maravelis, ed.
Akashic Books, October 2005, $15.95

Maravelis, ed.
October 2005
san-francisco-noir
15.95
Akashic Books