“Le Roi de la Porno” by Charles Rammelkamp

POETRY: “No doubt about it, a real moneymaker…. Of course it was going to burn.”

NoirCon Returns in 2022 with a Virtual Conference

Share your ideas and help shape the NoirCon Virtual Edition in 2022 by taking our survey…. NoirCon is planning a virtual conference in October 2022, and we need your input to make it the best conference possible! We kindly ask that you fill out the following survey, which will help us plan for the event. All […]

“Writing from an Illusion: Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961)” by Matthew Sorrento

NONFICTION: “The Hammett detective seeks any clues he can but is unable to recreate narratives through induction/deduction, hence his need to shake things up and unlock loose parts in the disorder he has confronted….”

“The Stew Pot” by Steve Carr

Sitting with his legs hanging out of the open boxcar door, Daryl lifted the left pants leg of his orange prison uniform and poked at the blood crusted on the thin piece of cloth, torn from his t-shirt, that was tied around his lower leg. He removed the cloth and wadded it, then threw it […]

“Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful?” by Melanie Dante

This piece is shared in memory of Greg Teetsell. “Oh, darling!” she exclaimed. Her blue eyes lit bright, lips tinted pink like an old photograph. “Wasn’t tomorrow wonderful?” Sparkling confetti fell through the air. “Wasn’t it just extraordinary?” They were dancing on top of the world. Band music played softly in the background. The moment […]

“The Orth-Daly Case” by Ben Himmelfarb

Part 1 This was supposed to be a simple lookup. A “lookup” was the general name for the work I did. People called or emailed the library almost everyday asking me to do research. Even though I couldn’t always find the answers they wanted, I was duty-bound to try. I was the local history librarian […]

“The Hard Summer That Laura Made Harder” by Brian Greene

I’ll always remember Laura as the woman who made one of the hardest summers of my life harder. It wasn’t enough that the nation-wide recession took its toll on our town and that the restaurant at which I’d been bartending was forced to close, due to lack of business; that I had to turn to […]

“Wakes” by D.V. Bennett

The kinds of turbulence people leave behind when they pass through the waters of our lives differ in wild ways. There are those wakes which die out soon, unnoticed when they reach land, and those which make a brief series of rapid spectacular splashes against the rocks, disappearing soon after. There are wakes though, from […]

“The Matter of the Smallgarian Wall and the Portuguese Undertaker” by Steve Levi

Captain Heinz Noonan, the “Bearded Holmes“ of the Sandersonville Police Department, was working on being inconspicuous at the Sandersonville Chamber of Commerce luncheon announcing the inauguration of a new police public relations campaign when he was spotted by Police Commissioner Lizzard who, unlike Noonan, was trying to be as visible as possible. This was hard […]

“The Cleaner” by Sharon Dempsey

Silvia sits on the back steps poking at the clogged head of the cleaning stick with her knitting needle. She feels pleased with herself for thinking to bring the needle with her. As usual, the machine is sucking up nothing at all, just blowing dust back at her. The rotating bristles are a mess of […]