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Long Island, NY, with its middle-class suburbs and wealthy Hamptons set, might at first glance seem less than ideal as a setting for noir stories. But seventeen writers find plenty of darkness amid the shopping malls and the surf in this collection of short stories, part of Akashic's City Noir series. As editor Kaylie Jones writes in her introduction, the most well-known story ever set on Long Island, THE GREAT GATSBY, was a noir novel at its core. The stories in this book, Jones writes, are "real-life noir." She's divided the book into four parts: Family Values, Hitting it Big, Love and Other Horrors, and American Dreamers. Many of the authors will be new to readers, although there are some well-known names, among them Reed Farrell Coleman, who has been called the country's "noir poet laureate." His story, "Mastermind," is set in Selden, a suburban conglomeration of chain restaurants and strip shopping centers. Coleman uses this setting to write about a low-level hoodlum who thinks he's hit on the right idea for a big score. The twist at the end of the story is delicious. Author Nick Mamatas, who has written several books, gives us "The Shiny Car in the Night," his tale of a mob-connected family in Northport. There's a nice nod to beat poet Jack Kerouac, who did live in Northport at one time. Some lesser-known authors also have written compelling stories. Qantha Ahmed, a doctor and new author, takes us to Garden City and the island's Pakistani community, in "Anjali's America." She writes about a doctor's frail patient and the patient's arrogant husband – and how one choice can alter a lifetime. In "Summer Love," JZ Holden takes us to Sagaponack, part of the Hamptons, where a woman falls into an affair with her married boss – no good, you know, can come of this. There is a little of everything in this collection, spanning the length and diversity of Long Island. Even the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Jules Feiffer weighs in, with a graphic novelette titled "Boob Noir." Unexpected for serious noir? Yes, but then that's Long Island – never what you expect it to be. § Lourdes Venard is a newspaper editor in Long Island, N.Y.
Reviewed by Lourdes Venard, June 2012
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