Plots with Guns: A Noir Anthology ***SIGNED LTD EDITION***

Smith, Anthony Neil (ed)

ISBN 10: 0939767511 / ISBN 13: 9780939767519

Published by Dennis McMillan Publications, Tucson AZ, 2005

About this Item

New in original shrinkwrap hardback. Bound in quarter-morocco and marbled paper over boards. Letter BB. Additional information that follows relies on comparables found online, as this copy is sealed: One of 156 lettered copies with this binding. Includes a limitation sheet signed by all contributors and editor. Note with letter information is under shrinkwrap.

Seller Inventory # 1964

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Plots with Guns: A Noir Anthology ***SIGNED LTD EDITION***
• Publisher: Dennis McMillan Publications, Tucson AZ
• Publication Date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0939767511
• ISBN 13: 9780939767519
• Binding: Hardcover/Hardback
• Edition: First Edition.
• Printing: 1st printing
• Condition: New
• Dust Jacket Condition: New
• Signed: signed by authors or artist
• Seller catalogs:
  • Anthology
  • Fiction

About this title

Synopsis

Book by Smith, Anthony Neil

Reviews

The short-lived e-zine from which this anthology takes its title specialized in firearm-fueled crime fiction. Smith has culled 24 of its best, and though a few seem stray shots, most hit their targets as bulls-eyes. Eddie Muller's "Wanda Wilcox Is Trapped" is a steamy slice of period Hollywood sleaze in which a gun factors into a declining starlet's rendezvous with her tawdry fate. In Jim Nisbet's "Brian's Story," a pistol concealed in a car serves as a touchstone for a beautifully narrated memory tale of a white-trash kid's revenge against the pusher who sold his older brother a fatal dose of heroin. The contemplative approach of these stories is counterbalanced by Kevin James Miller's "Stealing Klatzman's Diary," a morbidly amusing caper with a Shakespearean body count in which two small-time thieves play crime kingpins and federal investigators against one another. Deceptively simple tales in which the gunplay is just part of a larger moral drama include Robert Skinner's "Spanish Luck" and Sean Doolittle's "Worth." At their best, these stories demonstrate the breadth and creative reach of the modern hard-boiled tale. (Nov.)
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In the recent noir/hard-boiled/pulp resurgence, there are dozens of writers toiling in a genre with dim financial prospects, resurrecting a form other writers were once driven to out of financial need. The irony is almost . . . noir. Smith has selected 19 stories from his now-archived Web site, Plots with Guns, and 5 by writers associated with publisher Dennis McMillan. You can almost smell the quid pro quo. The Plots with Guns roster includes Eddie Muller ("Wanda Wilcox is 'Trapped!'"), Charlie Stella ("Young Tommy Burns"), and Sean Doolittle ("Worth"). The McMillan roster includes Jim Nisbet ("Brian's Story") and Kent Anderson ("Elvis Hitler"). Generally speaking, there's a mismatch (and an age difference) between the two groups; the former is writing more for the genre while the latter is informed by it. Most anthologies are uneven, but it's a bit jarring to find the masterful Michael Connelly one page after the middling Jason Starr. Still, some of the young guys get it exactly right, like Victor Gischler in "X's for Eyes," a perfect blend of contemporary retro paranoiac comedy--with a gun. Weird but worthwhile. Keir Graff
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