Los Angeles Noir by Denise Hamilton

Los Angeles Noir Reviews

• 
  Joe Valdez

  
  The noir anthologies published by Akashic Books have simply been one of my greatest discoveries since joining Goodreads. Debuting in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir, the series has expanded to at least eighty collections set in cities or regions around the globe, from Atlanta to Zagreb. If you love crime fiction loaded with dames, deceit and death, these books are for you. If you love travelogue or fiction that transports you to foreign locales, these books are for you. If you're interested in discovering authors, possibly ones based in your area, these books are for you.
  
  For authors, this series is the best creative writing instruction a library card can buy. Nothing separates the wheat from the chaff like reading seventeen different authors assigned the same genre, region and page count and studying who flourishes, who flounders and why. I'm not taking into account previous commercial success or prestige, only the quality each author put forth here. Next up for me is Los Angeles Noir, edited by Denise Hamilton and published in 2007. I'll run down my five favorite stories and five least favorite stories and my scouting report on each:
  
  1. The Golden Gopher by
  Susan Straight. In Downtown L.A., travel writer Fantine Xavierine Antoine is notified that a childhood friend in Rio Seco has been found dead. She attempts to track down and share this bad news with the man who loved her, who is now living on the street. FX recalls a roadtrip she made with him to L.A. as a teenager, visiting his sister who worked at a bar called the Golden Gopher. Straight writes haunted characters like no one else and her dexterity leaping across time, as well as capturing a sense of place, makes her contribution the cream of the crop. Five stars.
  
  2. The Method by
  Janet Fitch. In Los Feliz, Holly makes ends meet as a server at an Italian restaurant while trying to make her break as an actress. An Angeleno (by way of Lincoln, NE) long enough to take care of herself, she is somehow attracted to an older, pompous and derelict customer named Richard who asks her to return a missing dog to a has-been starlet. Fitch takes the world-class fucking, murder scheming and double crossing of the best noir tales, shakes them up and plies them with the perfect dash of wit and verisimilitude. Five stars.
  
  3. Mulholland Drive by
  Michael Connelly. In the Hollywood Hills, LAPD motor vehicle accident reconstructionist Detective Clewiston responds to a fatal crash on Mulholland Drive, in which a multimillionaire separating from his wife went through a guardrail in his Porsche. Accident, right? Connelly earns his lunch money as one of the best if not the best author of L.A. police stories by taking the reader under the yellow tape to work an investigation, using detail and environment specific to L.A. (something most of the authors here struggle with) to craft a sinister short story. Five stars.
  
  4. City of Commerce by
  Neal Pollack. In Glassell Park, has-been screenwriter, professional stoner and degenerate gambler Nick is notified that New Line is interested in optioning an old script and a meeting is set for tomorrow. To celebrate, he heads to a gaudy casino in Commerce to play a few hands of poker. Nick guts an aggressive Russian who insists on winning his money back. Pollack does a yeoman's job of balancing absurdity and danger, introducing a race against time that I liked as well as fantastic detail about poker, which has become to the film industry what golf is to most other industries. Five stars.
  
  5. Number 19 by
  Naomi Hirahara. In Koreatown, an exhausted server named Ann takes her co-worker's advice and spends $120 to visit a women's spa for a soak and a professional massage. She becomes fixated on her Korean masseuse, who can only offer the name "Number 19" and is obviously being taken advantage of by management under threat of deportation. While some of the stories here seem obvious, I have no idea from what well Hirahara drew her story, which features the veneer of sex, explosive violence and a character who gradually loses her moral compass. Five stars.
  
  13. Midnight In Silicon Valley by Denise Hamilton. In San Marino, a Chinese entrepreneur is kidnapped and weighs surrendering the combination to his office safe for his life and the life of his wife and daughter. Hamilton writes a flat, plot-oriented story with absolutely no effort put into creating a memorable character, as if writing Asians was simply too big a stretch for her. I also didn't find that this story was specific to Los Angeles in any way. It could've taken place anywhere. Thankfully, it is short. Two stars.
  
  14. Fish by Lienna Silver. In Fairfax District, an old Russian emigre takes advantage of the fatal medical emergency of his childhood friend to comfort his friend's widow. I'll admit to scanning through much of this story because it was so dreadfully boring. Silver tells and tells and tells about senior citizen Russians settling in L.A. and fails to craft a crime story or a story that's compelling in any way, shape or form. One star.
  
  15. Morocco Junction 90210 by Patt Morrison. In Beverly Hills, a woman who's carved out a niche tutoring actors on the factuality of whatever project they're working on and traffics in information befriends the maids of the rich and famous, who tip her about a robbery ring. Morrison tackles a story that is way, way, way more complicated than she has the space to articulate but even worse, what she comes up with is simply not exciting or compelling in any way. One star.
  
  16. Over Thirty by Christopher Rice. In West Hollywood, an actor struggling for work as he turns 30 returns from a meeting earlier than anticipated and catches his boyfriend in bed with a homeless man. Infidelity is soon replaced by something far worse. Rice has no facility whatsoever for writing character, apparently convinced that sexual orientation should tell the reader everything and be compelling on its own. The twist in the story is ridiculous, needlessly grisly and poorly written. One star.
  
  17. Dangerous Days by Emory Holmes II. In Leimert Park, an ex-gangbanger now operating his own private security firm is pressed into action when his LAPD buddy becomes convinced he has a week to live and that someone wants him dead. Giving Holmes the benefit of the doubt, he's clearly influenced by Iceberg Slim but writes a lazy, slapdash, barely coherent and laughably stupid ripoff of Superfly and Shaft. In the process, he delivers the messiest dropping of bird shit I've read since Kelley Armstrong. Zero stars.
  
  Rather than compute an average or maintain that every short story here is great, I'm giving this collection five stars because the five stories I liked are absolutely great and the ones that are mediocre or awful helped teach me a lot about the art of short story writing. This series offers such a tremendous value to readers and authors alike. I'm also discovering how much I enjoy a good stiff crime story done well. I'm tempted to read nothing but Akashic Noir the rest of the year, curious what sort of illicit activity is possibly taking place in Connecticut to warrant New Haven Noir.
• 
  Suzanne

  Given the grand tradition of noir in Los Angeles, I was disappointed in this. As a collection, it’s rather weak and probably just scratched the underbelly of the 3-star range because of good stories by Susan Straight and Janet Fitch. Most of these were just OK or mediocre, and a couple were downright awful. I didn’t even finish “Dangerous Days,” about Leimert Park/Mid-City gangsters (boring) and was completely baffled by “The Kidnapper Bell,” wherein the motivations of the narrator in setting out to solve a mystery, at great risk to his own safety and future, are completely, absolutely and totally nonexistent.
  
  A few were adequately entertaining for a “super-light-read” mood.
  
  Michael Connelly’s “Mulholland Drive” has San Fernando Valley Detective Clewiston investigating a fatal car crash off this famous road, where a brand new Porche Carrera has carried its millionaire owner over the side of the hill in what appears to be a simple accident on a misty night. Detective Clewiston, however, knows more than he’s saying about what happened.
  
  Although thematically rather pointless, “The Girl Who Kissed Barnaby Jones” was still well-written and kind of fun. The protagonist reports a rampage to 911: “She says they’ve already got a prowl car on the way to the street after reports of shots. Tongue-tied, I manage to get across that they’ll need an ambulance too, and that an armed, dangerous and crazy woman is probably on the premises, cranked to the gills. ‘She’s an actress,’ I add, in case additional precautions need to be taken.”
  
  Patt Morrison’s protagonist in “Morocco Junction 90210” offers a professional tutoring service to actors “whose thread count is higher than their SAT scores” to give them background information for roles they’re playing. But she’s also tight with the “Cleaning Lady Mafia” whose rich store of knowledge about their clients’ privileged lives is useful. I was annoyed by the fact that the mystery was “solved” by the narrator’s indulging in some pretty speculative suppositions about the links between various pieces of knowledge: no evidence, just conjecture. But aside from that, I loved the writing and the voice in this one.
  
  The book was somewhat redeemed by Straight and Fitch’s stories.
  
  Susan Straight’s “The Golden Gopher,” which her bio says won the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 2008, created sympathetic characters and evoked downtown neighborhoods with a realism that will make me seek out more of her work.
  
  In Janet Fitch’s “The Method,” a Nebraska-bred waitress/actress transplant to L.A. tells us “If you met me, you might think you knew me—a small-town girl, fresh from state college productions of “The Boyfriend” and “Annie Get Your Gun.” Up against Stepford armies of five-ten leggy blondes . . . I know, you’d think lunchmeat. But you don’t know me.” We really don’t. She meets a man she thinks could be a soul-mate (a con artist and worse), but that relationship goes south in a hurry when he makes some serious tactical mistakes. There are obvious echoes of “Sunset Blvd,” but I also appreciated the subtle references to Macbeth that are deftly woven in.
  
  Loved the book cover: a nighttime shot along the side of the majestic Art Deco Griffith Observatory, a grid of city lights in the distance.
  
• 
  Leslie

  A diverting anthology, though not exactly groundbreaking. The greatest excitement for me was recognizing the streets and haunts of my hometown (especially since I'm snowbound in Connecticut).
  
  Still... that's the best I can say about it? A majority of the pieces in this collection were competent, dutiful and predictable, honoring the Cain/Chandler legacy in an overly cautious, occasionally perfunctory way. A few writers clearly had fun with their stories - there was an occasional shot of adrenaline (notably in the pieces by Holmes, Pollack, and Morrison), and I always appreciate when writers aren't afraid to use humor, especially since stories in this genre can get caught in that undertow of bleak, tough-guy smugness.
  
  
  But what is noir, anyway? Or more precisely, what does noir mean to this book? And should I be judging these stories based on their successful acclimation to that vision, or not? Is noir principally crime fiction? Does it mean a body count? A perfect murder? A plot twist involving a girl and a gun? Or is it more to do with a hardboiled voice, that head-trapped loner-poet - cheeky innuendos and deadbeat metaphors? Or is it something more atmospheric - the underworld, the literal umbrage, the unseen? Is it the erotic intersection of sex and death? The vicarious thrill of bullets and blondes? Is it camp? Or is something deeper, more existential? I think - above all - noir is about desire. These stories clung too religiously (in my opinion) to established genre motifs, and in the end they struck the same note over and over. They were overridingly grim and lusterless - no light to give contour to the shadow. There were the metonymies of yearning here - greed, jealousy, lust - but the tangled roots of these were never explored. If these stories had gone a little deeper, maybe the characters would have risen from Central Casting to the Oscar podium, their conflicts elevated from cheap thrills to haunting insight. Noir is about desire, yes - even thwarted desire - but it's not about hopelessness.
• 
  William Graney

  With a different author for each story it's hard to come up with an overall rating. Some stories I liked, some I didn't.
• 
  Herman

  This is one of the books I bought at the Los Angeles Book Fair at USC. I liked the title and thought bout time a collection of short stories about LA. Being a native of this city I was interested too read what local writers had too say about their city. A little uneven some Good a few great and a few not really that good, but overall a solid effort. As a break down I found
  Mullholland Drive by Michael Connelly (Solidly good story) really enjoyed this one if all the stories were as strong as this one then I would have giving five stars to this collection.
  Number 19 by Naomi Hirahara new writers this was another big plus about this book I get to read so many local and good authors, another strong story.
  Dangerous Days by Emory Holmes II opps hit a pothole here, sorry but this story is about my part of town Leimert Park so I'm going to be tough grader here and unfortunately this was the weakest in terms of accurate description of the neighborhood and plot and character.
  Denise Hamilton Midnight in Silicon Valley Solid thumbs up on this story.
  In the section dealing with Hollywood, Janet Fitch The Method good story another thumbs up.
  Patt Morrison a local minor celebrity here this is the first fiction story of her's I have every read. Makes me wonder what other good stories she has I haven't heard of yet this one Morocco Junction 90210 was pretty good. Over Thirty by Christopher Rice I don't really get this one, not one of the best I'm afraid. Once More, Lazarus by Hector Tobar yes, no, feeling a little forced trying for the ethos on gun violence and just missing the mark. The Golden Gopher by Susan Straight a bit confusing I didn't really like this story either. The Kidnapper Bell by Jim Pascoe interesting ideal the tunnels sound like a plot point that if it were on TV everyone would be yelling don't go in there you fool, well I would be at least anyway not as strong as the first couple of stories I'm afraid. Fish by Lienna Silver I liked it thumbs up on this one. Roger Crumbler considered his shave by Gary Phillips OK stupid title and average story especially compared with the next one The Girl who Kissed Barnaby Jones by Scott Phillips really enjoyed this story one of the strongest in the book loved the ending. Kinship by Brian Ascalon Roley shout out to the Filipino community bout time we heard a story about you still not as strong as one would have hoped. The Hour when the ship comes in by Robert Ferrigno Confusing sorry didn't care for it. What you see by Diana Wagman like this collection of stories on a whole is a short story that starts off well, has good pose and flow interesting characters but while full of promise and good ideals it just doesn't really come together in the end and it leaves you a little confused and slightly disappointed wishing there were more too it, Four stars for language and effort.
• 
  Angela Brooks

  I loved all of these slices of LA life. These writers capture the personalities and minds of the characters in detail. There were unexpected surprises. As I read the story, I envisioned the mini noir film in my mind. I really enjoyed this book.
• 
  Dave

  Akashic has a series of geographically-themed collections of crime fiction. This one, as the title aptly implies, features Los Angeles, which, if you have spent decades of your life here, immediately makes you suspicious that the stories will be filled with cliches about Hollywood and Beverly Hills and Malibu. They are not. The collection is geographically divided into different areas of greater LA and the authors do a great job of capturing the different neighborhoods, making them even recognizable by a native. The stories take the reader through disparate neighborhoods such as Mulholland Drive where fancy sportscars go over the cliff's edge (Connelly's "Mulholland Drive") to the massage parlors and bus stops of Koreatown (Hirhara's "Number 19"). They take you into Leimert Park ("Dangerous Days" by Emory Holmes III). "Midnight in Silicon Valley" by Denise Hamilton is a tale about Chinese entreprenours driving Lexuses by the gravel pits of Irwindale: "They caught up with Russell Chen as he drove home from work, running his Lexus off the frontage road by the gravel pits of Irwindale."
  
  The second part of the anthology is subtitled "Hollywoodlandia" and takes the reader to a trattoria on Hillhurst that feels just like Los Feliz and even talks about the mansions north of Los Feliz and the older duplexes south of it where the older washed-up actresses retire ("The Method" by Janet Fitch). Patt Morrison's rendition of Beverly Hills is unlike anything you saw on "90210." "Over Thirty" is a chilling and explicit look at the underbelly of the alternative lifestyle of West Hollywood. "Once More, Lazarus" by Hector Tobias is about children and guns and detectives and has that East Hollywood desperate feel.
  
  The third part of the anthology takes the reader to that legendary land "East of La Cienega." Susan Straight's "The Golden Gopher" begins just like an old rock song about nobody walking in LA and features the neighborhoods of Echo Park and Downtown. "The Kidnapper Bell" by Jim Pascoe is about the LA River, the concrete-lined channel that passes for a river in this dry desert clime. It is about bodies and bells and Pavlov's dog. Neal Pollack's brilliant piece "City of Commerce" is an absolute gem that talks about a marriage on the rocks and the gambling bug in a concrete industrial wasteland where dreams go to die. "Fish" by Lienna Silver captures the atmosphere of the Russian emigre in Plummer Park. Gary Phillips's piece "Roger Crumbler Considered His Shave" rehashes some old noir themes about graft and adultery and mistrust. It doesn't necessarily evoke Mid-City, but its a good piece nonetheless.
  
  Part IV of the anthology is the Gold Coast and it begins with a topnotch piece by Scott Phillips, entitled "The Girl Who Kissed Barnaby Jones." It is about washed-up actresses, barmaids, and bartenders finally getting lucky. "Kinship" by Brian Ascalon Roley is a story that takes place in Mar Vista, a neighborhood that is about manhood, fatherhood, and neighborhood. It manages to vividly capture the neighborhood stashed between trendy Santa Monica and gang-infested Venice. Terrific story. Robert Ferrigno's "The Hour When The Ship Comes In" captures the intersection of various social and economic neighborhoods from Belmont shore, "the yuppie jewel of Long Beach" to the working-class areas of Long Beach in the shadow of the Queen Mary. Things happen - everywhere - and the trails of bloodstains can't always be washed away. Finally, "What You See" by Diana Wagman captures the Westchester hood.
  
  All in all, it is certainly a worthwhile collection taking on LA's mean streets from a variety of writing styles and giving the reader the flavor of all kinds of neighborhoods.
• 
  Chuck

  Really enjoyed this collection of short stories. My favorites? All of them! After vacation I plan on getting "Los Angeles Noir 2," also edited by Denise Hamilton.
  
• 
  Trin

  The majority of these stories are bleak and nasty and depressing, and, okay: noir, but the best noir contains a hint of hope, a little blanc to contrast with the darkness, right? Okay, maybe not. Maybe I just have more tolerance for bleakness in a 90-minute film than in story after story in a 300-page book. Still! Some of these stories were quite good, especially (and to my surprise)
  Janet Fitch’s Sunset Boulevard-esque tale. Perhaps
  White Oleander is worth reading, after all?
  
  One last complaint: none of these stories were really my L.A. I’m weirdly protective of my much-maligned city, and while yeah, there are tons of things that are sleazy and awful about it, there are wonderful things, too. I wish some writer out there would get the balance right.
• 
  Stephen

  As I've said before, short story collections are hit or miss. This one is mostly miss. Michael Connelly's is good as are a couple others, but most of the collection is sub-par. This is extremely disappointing because LA is the home of so much great noir. I feel that a great number of the stories weren't even noir.
• 
  John Hood

  Bound: The City of Shady Angels - SunPost Weekly July 15, 2010
  
  http://bit.ly/9k8i3U
  John Hood
  
  If cities are chicks – and if a city’s worth anything, it better be a chick – then L.A. is one shady lady. You might also say she’s a chick in heat. Wanton, insatiable, and faithful only as far as the next kiss, she’s the kinda chick a man will fall for, kill for and even die for, even as she’s walking out the door.
  
  L.A. is also a city of deep and often creepy secrets. Like the hot chick, it’ll give you the cold shoulder, purely as a matter of habit. But it’s a habit born of conflicting whispers and not so subtle innuendo, rather than any natural arrogance (though there is that too). When she does warm up and talk, it’s the things that are left unsaid you’ve gotta watch out for. Because it’s the untold tale that tells all.
  
  That’s obviously why Los Angeles is so full of story, and why nearly every story that springs from the city is shadier and more duplicitous than the last.
  
  The good folks at Akashic Books know this, and they’ve made a point of showing us too. Back in 2008 the Brooklyn-based house added to its ever-growing arsenal of Noir series titles by luring the likes of Michael Connelly, Susan Straight and Neal Pollack and letting ‘em rip about the city each calls home. The result, Los Angeles Noir (Akashic $15.95), was a ‘hood-by-‘hood romp through the shadows, and, like the others in the series, the equivalent of being given a detailed map to the town’s teaming underbelly.
  
  More recently Akashic went back to the city of shady angels and unleashed Los Angeles Noir 2: The Classics ($15.95). Like its predecessor, this second take was expertly edited by Denise Hamilton, a former L.A. Times reporter who’s got her own set of sprees starring the indomitable Eve Diamond. Unlike the previous edition, however, the stories contained here are some of the stories that set the stage for all the other stories to come.
  
  Among the many highlights are Leigh Brackett’s “I Feel Bad Killing You,” Chester Himes’ “The Night’s for Cryin’” and James M. Cain’s “Dead Man.” Cain, you’ll recall, was the crack scribe behind the novels Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce and The Postman Always Rings Twice, about as dynamite a debut as possible, while Himes was the rad cat who gave the world Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, the two gunned-up gumshoes of The Real Cool Killers and Cotton Comes to Harlem. Brackett wrote novels too, but she’s perhaps best remembered for scripting Robert Altman’s version of Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye and teaming with William Faulkner and Jules Furthman to do likewise for Howard Hawks’ adaptation of Chandler’s The Big Sleep, unquestionably one of the top ten movies of all time.
  
  The Big Sleep also happens to be the novel that made Raymond Chandler’s name synonymous with Noir. In fact it could be said that there’d be no Noir without Chandler (The Classics kicks off with his “I’ll Be Waiting”). Oh, the bad actors that define the form were already there, of course (in fact, Chandler knew many of them), and a whole host of wise-crackin’ scribblers were already pulping it up in rags like Black Mask by the time he came to the game. But before Chandler no writer had captured the City of Shady Angels with such depth and nuance. And none had made the low-slung story into such high art.
  
  Like the bad actors that populate his fiction, Chandler in fact had a past in fact, and Richard Rayneruses that past to thread A Bright and Guilty Place (Anchor $15.95). An oil executive of some small renown (back when forests of derricks covered the L.A. basin), Chandler was also a drunk and a bit of a skirt-chaser. When a fellow executive ratted him out to the big boss at the height of the Depression, Chandler got summarily sacked. And it was then that fate forced him to pick up a pen.
  
  It was slow going at first. In the seven years before breaking through with The Big Sleep Chandler wrote only a total of 20 stories. The first, as Rayner recounts, was called “Blackmailer’s Don’t Shoot,” and it was structured after a novella by Erle Stanley Gardner, then a big man on the Black Mask campus. Gardner, who’d eventually go on to create the legendary Perry Mason, was also the inspiration behind the second career of Leslie T. White, an investigator with the L.A. DA’s office.
  
  White couldn’t abide by the city’s continuous and rampant corruption, and after nearly a decade of witnessing the nefarious doings of what was then called “The System,” he bowed out and began writing of what he knew. Considering White was on hand to investigate the high profile killings of Ned Doheny (son of Teapot Dome oil baron E. L. Doheny and man of the Greystone mansion) and System boss Charlie Crawford (who ran ‘20s and ‘30s L.A. as if it were a fiefdom), he knew a lot. But it was when his boss BuronFitts dropped the prosecution against millionaire John P. Mills in what was called the Love Mart trial and instead saw to the conviction of madam Olive Day (who was testifying for the D.A.) that White decided enough was enough. And in his second life he’d leave behind a horde of stories and one minor classic called Me, Detective.
  
  Rayner’s counterpoint in the telling of L.A.’s shady beginnings is Assistant D.A. David H. Clark, a one-time golden boy who let The System have its way with the city – and eventually with him himself. But like all good guys gone bad who commit multiple murders, karma would catch up to Clark. And Rayner uses his headlined life as a sorta cautionary tale to what can happen to man of fluid morals in a city hellbent on being illicit. With a title taken from Orson Welles, Rayner’s highly-entertaining account of the facts that led to such great fiction is kinda like being let in on the creation story itself. An inside look at the inner workings of those who lived outside and above the laws that they themselves often made.
  
  John Buntin also takes two characters to tell his L.A. story, though in his case it’s gangster Mickey Cohen and Police Chief William H. Parker, perhaps the two best known figures in the city’s pivotal history. Like all of the above, it is the shadows that most interest Buntin, and his L.A. Noir (Three Rivers Press $16) is consumed with what wenton when “the streets were dark with something more than night.”
  
  Buntin begins where Rayner left off, in the late ‘30s, when Parker and Cohen were just coming up. Parker, a native of Deadwood, South Dakota, fought long and hard, against seemingly insurmountable odds, to rid the LAPD of its bad elements. Cohen, who was born in Brownsville, New York, fought it out on the streets after the collapse of The System left a void in the underworld. By the ‘50s the two had become mortal enemies. And it is their ongoing battle which Buntin chronicles with such relish.
  
  As you might suspect, it’s a knockdown, drag out, blood-soaked battle for the very soul of the city itself. People get dead. Then more people get dead. Most of them deserving of the bullets.The bold-faced names are here in force, from newspaper moguls Harry Chandler and William Randolph Hearst (who also hated each other), studio head Harry Cohn, to entertainers like Frank Sinatra, Lana Turner and Sammy Davis Jr. But it’s Buntin’s sense of place which propels this rigorously researched look back into the depths of America’s most fable-ridden town, and his ability to evoke all the madness and badness and danger as if it were yesterday.
  
  Taken separately, any one of the aforementioned is a delightfully dark ride down some very mean streets. Taken together however, they’re the sum of the sordid cityin its entirety. If you’re at all interested in how L.A. got to be such a shady lady, in fiction and in fact, then this quartet is just what you need to get.
• 
  Clayton Porter

  There's something inherently fun in reading a collection of short stories focused on murder, kidnaping, torture, gambling and embezzlement- real ugly, "under-belly," sinister stuff that takes place right in the heart of a city known for its beauty, its glamor, ageless icons and angels.
  
  I'm not about to throw my hat into the ring that is the debate if LA has culture or not (especially when, as people like to do, compare it to NYC). Yes, its a car culture, you sit in traffic a lot. Yes, people tend to keep more to themselves then other cities. Folks are here for a season then leave for other pastures. But ask anyone who hasn't visited the city just for a week where they stayed with their friend in West Hollywood but went out in Santa Monica. Ask anyone who's spent a couple of years in LA and they will be able to point out a vibe, a feeling that is noticed in the city. Something you don't always pick up on at first visit, especially when most time is spent with your head down in the backseat of a ride share. The stories of Los Angeles Noir do a great job of capturing that feel within just a short number of pages, while tapping into more primal vices, motives and thoughts.
  
  Stand out stories include Mulholland Drive, a straightforward noir story. Set at nighttime at the scene of a fatal accident along the curvy bends of Mulholland drive. Then in The Method we meet an aspiring actress. Bored with her day job and with her life. She's curious to see where a new relationship with a strange man takes her. Over Thirty is a quick, brutal and bloody West Hollywood romp found towards the middle of the book. The Kidnapper Bell is an enjoyable screwball short where the protagonist, in true noir style, has evil alternative motives from the start but finds himself an unlikely hero. Fish, my favorite of the anthology, is a story that spins its wheels around the lives of two immigrant older men in a way that paints a complex friendship bonded by an alienation to the city they live in. They are at odds with their families, their past lives and at times with each other. It feels genuine and human with longing and nostalgia from their own lives. This until, as it is noir, a dark and murky end is exposed.
  
  Where some stories fell flat, the stronger of the collection won me over. Not to say that the stories that I skipped weren't well crafted, they just weren't for me. There are alot of stories bound into the book's 348 pages. And like the city I live in, I'm going to drive through parts where I don't belong nor do I need to be there. But for those areas, it doesn't mean the streets, buildings and those who live in them need to leave.
• 
  Chloe

  Like any short story collection, there were hits and misses in this - but, I'm happy to say, more hits than misses. There were one or two stories that left me cold - Jim Pascoe's The Kidnapper Bell was among the more disturbing of the stories, but I couldn't get behind the "big reveal" and the story would have been stronger if the story focused on the garden-variety evil of the date-rape wielding narrator instead of the baroque depravity of the kidnapper -and of course, I'm very critical of how one evil is seemingly overshadowed by the other as the story progresses and Neal Pollack's City of Commerce gets too bogged down in boring, pedantic poker details.
  
  But you know what? Every other story was either good, or brought something new and necessary to the table (more stories about immigrants! more stories about mixed-race folks! more noir stories where murder isn't necessarily the point of the plot!). I also especially loved Number Nineteen, Naomi Hirahara's exploration of a Koreatown massage parlor and Midnight in Silicon Valley, Denise Hamilton's story about Chinese-American immigrants. The latter was especially important to me, because I grew up in that community, a town or two over, and still have yet to find fiction that represents my experiences there, and while her story doesn't resonate personally with me, it at least represents a world that I know intimately.
  
  A really nice collection overall, and one that makes me more eager than before to read Denise Hamilton's work.
• 
  Brendan

  Rating: 3 1/2
  
  Good variety of plots, types of characters, etc. A few stand-out stories. Others were just okay though.
  
  Favorites:
  "City of Commerce" - Neal Pollack - gambling
  "The Method" - Janet Fitch - a waitress / actress
  "Roger Crumbler Considered His Shave" - Gary Phillips - his 50th birthday
  
  Martin Nathanson's idea of cutting loose was putting ketchup on his scrambled eggs.
  - Gary Phillips, "Roger Crumbler Considered His Shave"
  
  There are more unlisted phone numbers in L.A. than anyplace but Vegas, and the Beverly Hills residential phone book is thinner than Nicole Kidman's ankles.
  - Patt Morrison, "Morocco Junction 90210"
• 
  Heather

  Brand-new stories by: Michael Connelly, Janet Fitch, Susan Straight, Hector Tobar, Patt Morrison, Robert Ferrigno, Gary Phillips, Christopher Rice, Naomi Hirahara, Jim Pascoe, Scott Phillips, Diana Wagman, Lienna Silver, Brian Ascalon Roley, and Denise Hamilton.
  
  Heather's Notes
  I am not even going to bother making notes on the rest of the stories. None of them make sense to me. They are all weird and sad. Apparently noir books are not my thing. However, I did finish all the stories and therefore will give it a rating.
• 
  Mrs. Read

  As others have noted, it’s hard to rate an anthology. For me they’re kind of like prospecting - lots and lots of dry holes (mixed metaphor deliberately inserted to see if anyone’s reading this), but Oh, The delight of striking gold! Los Angeles Noir’s gold was Robert Ferrigno’s "The Hour When the Ship Comes In." I’ve tried Ferrigno’s novels a couple times and given up almost immediately - his style doesn’t match my taste - so I’d probably have never come across this short otherwise. Chacun à son goût and all that ... but insofar as one person’s recommendation is worth anything, mine is Akashnic’s Los Angeles Noir for the story "The Hour When the Ship Comes In" alone.
• 
  Kat

  Honestly the most uneven short story collection I’ve read in quite a while. A few were good, but most were no better ok, and I ended up skipping out on several. I was planning to read the San Diego and Seattle versions but don’t think I will now.
• 
  Kevin Barney

  Not as good as the DC Noir book, but it did have some interesting stuff.
• 
  Chelsea

  3.5
• 
  Bernard Convert

  Superbe ! Il y a d'autres villes dans la même collection, Paris, Bruxelles. Pas sûr que le noir leur aille aussi bien qu'à Los Angeles mais je les mets dans ma PAL...
• 
  Nancy

  Very well-written, descriptive, and suspenseful. Some of the endings left me hanging and unsettled - though I'm sure that's just my need to know what happened!!!
• 
  David Bossert

  A wonderful collection of crime stories.
• 
  Meg

  Interesting mythical stories set in Los Angelos, all very set in their location and language. Some stories were fairly weak, but most were very enjoyable
• 
  Lee Musgrave

  Engaging selection of stories.
• 
  Ms. Smith

  It's a fun collection of horror stories. Some were better than others, but over all I enjoyed
• 
  Alex Budris

  Some good stories. How 'noir' some of them are is open to argument...
• 
  Harris

  The last entry I’ve read from the Akashic Noir anthology series, I read this one a recent trip to Southern California and mostly had a good time with it. The trip, of course, was awesome. Like others in the series, various local authors tackle stories of the hard boiled and weird exploring the neighborhoods, landmarks, and cultures of Los Angeles. The tone of the stories run from comical to bleak, but all deal with the seedier, more underground aspects of life in the city. The anthology does a decent job of capturing the feel of the city (though one in which I have still spent very little time in), but may not have realized it to its full potential.
  
  There were a few aspects of the collection that we a little disappointing, I felt. In spite of its venerable history of being the veritable birthplace of film noir and the origin of many of the tropes of the genre, it seemed that none of the stories here really drew upon that background. All of the stories were set in contemporary times, with none taking advantage of this history as backdrop for period pieces. A few of the stories were pretty rote, paint by numbers affairs, with the common, unavoidable cliches of the genre played pretty straight; dames, double crosses, detectives, et cetera. Also, the stories tended to end abruptly and sometimes with little resolution, though if the atmosphere is impeccable this can be a plus. More often here, it just felt like running out of space.
• 
  Jarrett

  4.6/5