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Overview
Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book is comprised of all-new stones, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. Here, best-selling crime writer S.J. Rozan corrals a diverse crew of celebrated authors to highlight the dark magnificence of her native New York City borough.You can't pack so much yearnings, so many people, such a range of everything-income, ethnicity, occupation, land use-into a single borough, even one as big as the Bronx, and not force the kind of friction that slices and sparks. The Bronx has been home to bigtime gangsters-from the Jewish organized crime of Murder Inc. and the Italian Cosa Nostra to the equally organized drug-dealing gangstas of today. The Third Avenue El was a Hopperesque symbol of urban hopelessness; it's been demolished, but trains on other lines still rumble through the roofscapes of the borough. Prosperity is increasing and drug use is decreasing, but the public housing projects in the Bronx are some of the nation's largest and remain some of its toughest. Many palces in the Bronx seem hidden in shadows, just as the Bronx itself is in Manhattan's shadow. And dark stories develop best in shadows...
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
Akashic's latest city-themed crime anthology successfully captures the immense diversity of the Bronx, from the mean streets of the South Bronx to affluent Riverdale, in 19 tales by authors both well known and obscure. The most imaginative entry, Joseph Wallace's "The Big Five," about a hunter who targets his prey in the Bronx Zoo as part of a national contest, concludes with a satisfying noir twist. Lawrence Block's Riverdale story, "Rude Awakening," also surprises the reader with its clever resolution of a one-night stand. Particularly inventive is Kevin Baker's grim "The Cheers Like Waves," set in the shadow of Yankee Stadium. Rozan, herself a contributor, has put together one of the series' better entries, with memorable tales of betrayal and despair that reflect the borough's varied ethnic populations and geography. (Aug.)
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