Retreats from Oblivion: The Journal of NoirCon
Noir, crime, and mystery short stories, scholarship, and so much more
BLOGS: “She’d gotten no trigger warning. And her entire life, she wanted to scream now, had deserved a trigger warning. Searing, surprisingly witty, and deeply human, Trigger Warning is a novel about the durational aftermath of anti-Black police violence.”
Read More RFO Editor Matthew Sorrento in Conversation with Novelist Jacinda Townsend, 4/3/26, Inkwood Books, HaddonfieldREVIEW: “Lee Raybon calls himself a “truth storian” [p]layed by Ethan Hawke as a cross between Hunter S. Thompson and Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe….”
Read More “On the Mean Streets of Tulsa: FX’s The Lowdown” by Anees ArefPercival Everett will appear at Rutgers University-Camden on Thursday, March 26, 2026 | 6:00 p.m.
Read More Percival Everett, Author of Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novel James and the Thriller The Trees, to Appear at Rutgers University-CamdenBOOK REVIEW: “Aarons’ work is full of many skillful riffs as seen in this pair of rollicking page-burners….”
Read More “Guts, Grit, and Glorious Pulp: Edward S. Aarons’ Death in a Lighthouse and Murder Money” by William BlickPOETRY: “Cinema and psycho, a fine-tuned formula / of violence and charisma—time-honored and as popular / as warm apple pie on Thanksgiving….”
Read More “American Psychos” by Vince A. LiagunoARTICLE PREVIEW: “The last word on this niche genre, with a dense amount of information….”
Read More Preview: “Home Invasion Horrors” by William BlickARTICLE PREVIEW: “If there is a lesson to be learned from noir stories, be they in print or filmed, it is that the past never stays in the past for long, and the inevitably ill-fated future closes in faster than expected…..”
Read More Preview: “from Build My Gallows High to Out of the Past” by Jeremy CarrFICTION: “As Tito stepped forward with the pistol in hand, it seemed Corlett’s friend, the quiet, suspicious winemaker, had been right….”
Read More “The Brass Ring” by Lance MasonSHORT STORY EXCERPT: “He’s so concerned for the way he thinks things should be, he forgets a man can’t move something as big as the Moon….”
Read More “Something as Big as the Moon: from The Moon Has Fallen into a Well” by Vincent CzyzBOOK REVIEW: “Jakubowski in the end absolutely triumphs with his rhapsodic prose….”
Read More “Vivid Evocations and Deadly Revelations: Manhattan Death Ballad” by WIlliam Blick
Retreats from Oblivion: The Journal of NoirCon 