“Swamp Witch Blues” by Jason M. Tucker

FICTION: “Heavy, mud-scented air wafted in from the swamp and was warm enough to build up a sweat just sitting. It made everything a bit more miserable.”

“Leaving Rock Bottom” by Robb T. White

FICTION: “If there was a bottom beneath where I stood in that March wind, I didn’t want to know it.”

“Literary Mixtape: Coming Through in Waves – Crime Fiction Inspired by Pink Floyd” by John Talbird

REVIEW ESSAY: “Pink Floyd were so cerebral. Dark, but in a post-apocalyptic-cum-dystopian sci-fi kind of way, not a crime story way. However, the anthology, edited by crime writer and memoirist T. Fox Dunham, makes a certain kind of twisted sense.”

“Charged with Manslaughter in Her Boyfriend’s Suicide” by Charles Rammelkamp

POETRY: “goading him to take his life, / Lola claimed it was free speech….”

“Femme Fatale Assassins and the Time Clock” by Ken Hall

NONFICTION: “A more recent twist on the general narrative arc [of the hitwoman] places the female assassin as a child, perhaps orphaned, but certainly appropriated by a handler, who is trained from an early age, in a morally perverse adoption scenario, to become the ideal robotic killer…..”

“Urbanología” by Giovanni Mangiante

POETRY: “the closest they got to heaven….”

“Tenderloin” by Steve Carr

FICTION: “I still wear my dog tags. They remind me of who I am, or was…. No one can see the damage but me.”

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 […]

Nuts and Bolts to the Eight Steps: Paul Tomlinson on Writing the Crime Thriller

INTERVIEW: “Thrillers are more complicated because there’s a lot more variation – many more sub-genres…. All the plots have much in common, but they all have distinct features that readers or film viewers demand – the genre conventions or tropes. Many writers don’t realise how important these are….”

“Making Amends” by Julian Grant

FICTION: “And then nothing…. I explained to them the importance of making amends, the value of a rigorous moral inventory and doing the right thing….”