Product Description

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.

Denise Hamilton writes the Eve Diamond series. Her books have been shortlisted for the Edgar, Macavity, Anthony, and Willa Cather awards. The Los Angeles Times named Last Lullaby a Best Book of 2004, and it was also a USA Today Summer Pick and a finalist for a Southern California Booksellers Association 2004 award. Her fourth Eve Diamond novel, Savage Garden, is a Los Angeles Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Southern California Booksellers Association award for Best Mystery of 2005.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #66110 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 275 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Akashic's city-themed noir series (New Orleans Noir, etc.) finally reaches L.A., a prime locale for this subgenre. Of the 17 contributors, bestseller Michael Connelly is most likely to be familiar to a wide audience. Connelly's "Mulholland Drive," a nice tribute to the classic noir film Double Indemnity, is representative of the quality writing that followers of previous volumes have come to expect. The movie industry, both latter-day and the present, offers a rich background for tight tales of trapped men and women whose passions or desperate circumstances lead them to violent ends, such as the book's stand-out, Janet Fitch's "The Method." Another highpoint is the collection's concluding story, Diana Wagman's "What You See," a depressing but compelling tale of a tragic obsession. (May)
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About the Author
Denise Hamilton writes the Eve Diamond series. Her books have been shortlisted for the Edgar, Macavity, Anthony and Willa Cather awards. The Los Angeles Times named "Last Lullaby" a "Best Book of 2004" and it was also a USA Today Summer Pick and a finalist for a Southern California Booksellers Association 2004 award."

Customer Reviews

Takes the good people of the world out of their safe little lives...
... and gives a glimpse of the seamy underbelly. As a native, it's always fun to read about the places I know and love; as a reader, I'm impressed with the breadth of writers covered in this anthology (and it's a pleasure to recognize one of them as a high school acquaintance of mine!) Some of the stories are better written then others, but all of them bring the different parts of Los Angeles to life. This is part of a series of "Noir" collections; I will definitely be searching out other volumes in the series.

It's mixed, and there's more bad than good
It's just about what I was expecting--a collection of stories ranging from the good ("The Golden Gopher," "Kinship," "The Kidnapper Bell") to the horrible ("Mulholland Drive," "Midnight in Silicon Valley," "Number 19," "Once More, Lazarus"). Unfortunately, the bad outweighs the good, as is always a risk with these multiple-author anthologies.

The definitively bad line is from "Midnight in Silicon Valley," where we are informed that the main character was wooing big companies "like Intel and Pentium." That's just careless writing and poor editorial control, and takes you right out of the story.

Love the Noir
I love anthologies, mysteries, and noir, so when you put them all together, I find it hard to resist. I took this book on a cruise with me and had a great time with it, because I could read a quick story before dashing off on some excursion. The tales are all well written, and each provided as many twists and turns as a ride down Mulholland. My favorites were Denise Hamilton's "Midnight in Silicone Valley" and "Roger Crumbler Considered His Shave" by Gary Phillilps, but I can honestly say I didn't hate any of them.