Noir, crime, and mystery short stories, scholarship, and so much more
FICTION: “There was a run of three years straight when Rose’s family came out on top, and Myrna’s six feet under. But then Myrna’s family had double wins, three times over a decade. The law of averages had held true….”
Read More “Honor” by J. D. HornNOVEL EXCERPT: “I don’t want to be anyone’s favorite law enforcement officer. When you’re dealing with shit, the only enforcement is death….”
Read More “Nobody’s Favorite: from Detroit Massacre” by Barry N. Malzberg (1939-2024, Writing as Mike Barry)BOOK REVIEW: “Fenwick’s work is unlikely to shock audiences like sensation fiction had done to the Victorians, but the domestic realism and colorful characters are likely to engage the avid mystery aficionado.”
Read More “A New Sensation: Elizabeth Fenwick’s Disturbance on Berry Hill/A Night Run” by William BlickBOOK REVIEW: “A comprehensive catalogue of NYC-centric crime movies from the 1970s….”
Read More “The City as a Character: Andrew J. Rausch’s The Taking of New York City” by Brian GreeneINTERVIEW: “Hollywood embodies the title of one of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s worst novels: it’s beautiful and it’s damned.”
Read More “Hollywood Confidential: An Interview with Dan Bronson on Shout at the Devil” by Stephen GallowayREVIEW ESSAY: “As the movie-viewing public was becoming more comfortable with these kinds of filmic depictions, poster art, never to shy away from marketing hooks, aimed to tantalize prospective audiences with images that promised entrance into a suspenseful world of increasingly commonplace criminality and subversion of systemic stability….”
Read More “Round Like a Circle in a Spiral: The Poster Art of Film Noir” by Marlisa SantosINTERVIEW: “In The Whitewashed Tombs, I aimed to voice and humanize the struggles and resilience of the LGBTQ+ community in Ghana and much of Africa, where some 32 countries have anti-LGBTQ laws, some with the death penalty as punishment…. But, more widely, it’s stunning and tragic that anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment is so prevalent over much of the globe….”
Read More “African Noir and Societal Critique: An Interview with Kwei Quartey” by William BlickNOVEL EXCERPT: “The old trees read my mind and turned the contents of my brain inside out….”
Read More “Making a Friend of Horror: from The Haunted Screen” by J.M. TyreeREVIEW ESSAY: “Many aspects of Zaillian’s series, both thematic and visual, make it an almost perfect example of neo-noir. Yet, in other ways, Ripley goes beyond the original noir cycle in ways that are reminiscent of the best revisionary noir films.”
Read More Preview: “Steven Zaillian’s Ripley: Neo-Noir or Revisionary Noir?”SHORT FICTION/EROTICA: “Itztli loved life. He also feared the old gods. And the new…”
Read More “Dancer Loses Her Head in Tapas Bar” by Jonathan Woods
Retreats from Oblivion: The Journal of NoirCon 