Boston Noir »

Boston and its environs are the setting for most of Dennis Lehane s fiction. From gritty inner-city motels to the lavish suburbs, Lehane brings a Boston subculture and its vivid characters to life in his detective novels. Lehane fans return time and time again for his tense psychological thrillers that chip away at secrets deep within the human soul.

There was only ever one candidate for the job of assembling Boston Noir: Dennis Lehane!

Publishers Weekly

In the best of the 11 stories in this outstanding entry in Akashic's noir series, characters, plot and setting feed off each other like flames and an arsonist's accelerant. These include Lehane's own “Animal Rescue,” about a killing resulting from a lost and contested pit bull; John Dufresne's “The Cross-Eyed Bear,” in which a pedophile priest is caught between the icy representative of the archdiocese and one of his now adult victims; and Don Lee's “The Oriental Hair Poets,” which charts a literary feud that escalates into a police case. Two populations that define the city for outsiders—the elite WASP “Brahmins” and the hundreds of thousands of college students surging through to earn their degrees—appear only in passing. While Lehane expresses the fear in his introduction that Boston is becoming “beiger,” less tribal and gritty and more gentrified and homogenized, this anthology shows that noir can thrive where Raymond Chandler has never set foot. (Nov.)

Contents

Introduction....................17
Lynne Heitman Exit Interview Financial District....................38
Dennis Lehane Animal Rescue Dorchester....................65
Jim Fusilli The Place Where He Belongs Beacon Hill....................77
Patricia Powell Dark Waters Watertown....................95
Dana Cameron Femme Sole North End....................116
Brendan DuBois The Dark Island Boston Harbor....................137
Stewart O'Nan The Reward Brookline....................147
John Dufresne The Cross-Eyed Bear Southie....................175
Don Lee The Oriental Hair Poets Cambridge....................195
Itabari Njeri The Collar Roxbury....................212
Russ Aborn Turn Speed North Quincy....................238