Seattle Noir (Akashic Noir) - Softcover

Colbert, Curt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1933354801 ISBN 13: 9781933354804

Publisher: Akashic Books, Ltd., 2009

Synopsis

Brand new stories by: G. M. Ford, Skye Moody, R. Barri Flowers, Thomas P. Hopp, Patricia Harrington, Bharti Kirchner, Kathleen Alcalá, Simon Wood, Brian Thornton, Lou Kemp, Curt Colbert, Robert Lopresti, Paul S. Piper, and Stephan Magcosta.

Early Seattle was a hardscrabble seaport filled with merchant sailors, longshoremen, lumberjacks, rowdy saloons, and a rough-and-tumble police force not immune to corruption and graft. By the mid-50s, the town had added Boeing to its claim to fame, but was still a mostly blue-collar burg that was infamously described as a cultural dustbin” by the Seattle Symphony’s first conductor. Present-day Seattle has become a pricey, cosmopolitan center, home to Microsoft and Starbucks. The city is famous as the birthplace of grunge music, and possesses a flourishing art, theatre, and club scene that many would have thought improbable just a few decades ago. But some things never change crime being one of them. Seattle’s evolution to high-finance and high-tech has simply provided even greater opportunity and reward to those who might be ethically, morally, or economically challenged (crooks, in other words). But most crooks are just ordinary people, not professional thieves or crime bosses they might be your pleasant neighbor, your wife or lover, your grocer or hairdresser, your minister or banker or lifelong friend yet even the most upright and honest of them sometimes fall to temptation.
Within the stories of Seattle Noir, you will find: a wealthy couple whose marriage is filled with not-so-quiet desperation; a credit card scam that goes over-limit; femmes fatales and hommes fatales; a delicatessen owner whose case is less than kosher; a famous midget actor whose movie roles begin to shrink when he starts growing taller; an ex-cop who learns too much; a group of mystery writers whose fiction causes friction; a Native American shaman caught in a web of secrets and tribal allegiances; sex, lies, and slippery slopes . . . and a cast of characters that always want more, not less . . . unless . . .
Curt Colbert is the author of the Jake Rossiter & Miss Jenkins mysteries, a series of hard-boiled, private detective novels set in 1940s Seattle. The first book, Rat City, was nominated for a Shamus Award in 2001. A Seattle native, Colbert still resides in his hometown.

About this title

About the Author

Curt Colbert is the author of the Jake Rossiter & Miss Jenkins mysteries, a series of hardboiled, private detective novels set in 1940s Seattle. The first book, Rat City, was nominated for a Shamus Award in 2001. A Seattle native, Colbert is currently finishing the fourth book in the series, Nowhere Town, as well as working on a present-day novel.

From Booklist

Is Seattle too “nice” for noir? It is home to the original Skid Road, the Green River Killer, and the second most popular suicide bridge in the nation and yet perhaps too laid-back and politically correct to embrace the genre’s viciousness and depravity. Of the many varied shades of local color on display in this mixed but worthwhile collection, only a few have the inky chiaroscuro found in Akashic noir entries from Brooklyn or Detroit, among them Stephan Magcosta’s nightmarish tale of a bad encounter between an Iraqi war widow and a cabdriver and Lou Kemp’s twisted, gothic Sherlockian pastiche. Other standouts include Simon Wood’s taut tale of a bar brawler recruited into a life-changing club, Robert Lopresti’s demented dialogue between homeless murder witnesses, Curt Colbert’s clipped Jake Rossiter detective yarn (crossing O. Henry with Hammett), and Skye Moody’s memorable funhouse tale of embittered showbiz dwarfs and hothouse flowers that could be Nathaniel West’s Day of the Locust as told by Tom Robbins. Fourteen original stories that may well be of interest beyond the Northwest. --David Wright

About this edition

• Publisher: Akashic Books, Ltd.
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1933354801
• ISBN 13: 9781933354804
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 300