Re: RARA-AVIS: D.C. Noir

From: Karin Montin ( kmontin@sympatico.ca)
Date: 30 Jan 2006


Great title, yes, but in July 2002, I wrote:

I picked up The Big Mango at the library. It is published by Akashic, which also published Adios Muchachos and Jose Latour's Outcast (indicated as out of print: has anyone else reprinted it?), so I thought it was a good bet.

The author has all kinds of credentials as a journalist and one other book about Nina Halligan, PI, under his belt. The story concerns a Caribbean island nation called Misericordia, which seems modelled on Haiti. Its president calls Nina for help, but that's as far as I got. The book begins with background on Misericordia's history, then moves into the story proper, with lots of discussion of Caribbean and African-American politics.

Anyway, the word "peazant," repeated a number of times, made me wonder if I was missing some sort of political connotations, or if it was just the editing that was really bad. Thirty-four excruciating pages later, I decided the writer and editor together were too much for me.

I had been looking forward to an exciting story featuring an African-American woman as a tough private investigator and was sorely disappointed. Has anyone tried Black Heat and found it worth recommending?
*****

Let us know about D.C. Noir. I hope it lives up to its promise.

Karin

At 04:08 PM 30/01/2006 +0000, Richard Moore wrote:

>A day or two ago I picked up a copy of the just-published D.C. NOIR
>(Akashic Books)edited by George Pelecanos. It looks to be a very good
>anthology with stories by Pelecanos, Jim Fusilli, Laura Lippman,
>Robert Andrews, James Grady, and several others new to me. The "new
>to me" category includes several that I am eager to try including
>stories by Norman Kelley and Ruben Castaneda. Castaneda I know from
>his journalism and Kelley has authored several noir novels including
>two with great titles BLACK HEAT and THE BIG MANGO.
>
>This is the latest in a series of anthologies with earlier entries for
>Brooklyn, Dublin, Chicago, and San Francisco. Are these earlier
>entries worth searching out?

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