“Geek” by Matthew Sorrento

The pit of fire in me was right there with death…. Carnival train rolled to a stop at our camp. The big boss came right out, had me running from the Model T wreck over our fire. After a few words he returned with an armful of bottles, one for all. We’ll be here, just […]

“Gray” by Gerald So

Fading bleakly, / truer to life…. Noir’s original palette projects no choice for all in the frame, their desperate acts fading bleakly, truer to life than we care to say. Gerald So edits The Five-Two weekly crime poetry site. Previously he served as an officer of The Short Mystery Fiction Society and fiction editor for Kevin Burton Smith’s www.thrillingdetective.com.

“Stranger Dangers: Sexuality, Adolescence and The End of Everything” by K.A. Laity

Abbott uses the crime and its investigation to upend all manner of assumptions about how we view girls and – as narrator Lizzie discovers – how they view themselves and one another. Megan Abbott’s 2011 crime novel The End of Everything deals with the situation most parents dread – and most news outlets exploit: the […]

“Wikipedian Was” by Joseph Hirsch

But I needed the teen to be alive…. Why, then, was this balm for my soul’s remainder? By which I mean, to watch a movie from 1957 on a computer screen at 3 a.m.? The shaggy monster creeping like a dirty Labrador draped in a pile of shag carpets making slow progress toward the chrome […]

“Noir at MoMA: Two Recollections” by Kurt Brokaw

Two favorite memories less about what was on screen and more about the audiences that were viewing them. If you’ve lived in Manhattan most of your adult life (and are reading this journal), you’ve probably watched some choice noirs at the Museum of Modern Art. These two favorite memories are less about what was on screen, and more about the audiences that were […]

“Death Takes a Byline: the Interview” by D.S. Lliteras

The below was excerpted from Death Takes a Byline (Book One, Chapters 1-3) by D.S. Lliteras (Rainbow Ridge Books, 2020; Copyright © 2020 by D. S. Lliteras). She reached into a canvas bag that hung from her shoulder, pulled out a notepad, and studied him. He walked as if he was being followed; he was afraid […]

“All You Need is a Gun and A Girl” by Jim Towns

He leaned across the seat and opened the door, watching every inch of her…. I. Bare trees clung to the snow-frosted hills around the ravine, and the girl who walked along the railroad tracks was tall and beautiful. She wore mirrored sunglasses, long coat, tall boots. An old surplus army bag swung on a leather […]

“My Father Met Jayne Mansfield” by Joseph Hirsch

He must have sensed her blonde came from a bottle…. and that his parents were liars, too. He met her as a child which somehow seems a waste, a thwarted prepubescent prank played by a horndog demigod. His head only came up to the curve of her oft-measured breasts, and when he peeked, he was […]

“Training” by Charles Rammelkamp

She gave into temptation…. It was difficult for me to breath. The guy I bought my dope from when I was in grad school in Boston lived on the fourth floor of the brownstone where my Notes-from-Underground basement studio was. Ralph owned a Doberman Pinscher named Mahogany, a sleek, athletic-looking animal, always at Ralph’s heel, […]

“Hard Case Crime, December 2020: Unlikely Masters” by Matthew Sorrento

On a few surprising releases from the noir fiction mainstay. Readers of the Hard Case Crime series are rarely unsatisfied and regularly served a nice surprise. On the centennial Ray Bradbury’s birth came one, in the form or a collection of his crime fiction. With the author a formative one for so many (myself included), […]