Short Stories to Know and Love | Damn Near Dead: An Anthology of Geezer Noir

Black Diamonds | Damn Near Dead: An Anthology of Geezer Noir | Duane Swierczynski, Laura Lippman, ...

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	• Damn Near Dead: An Anthology of Geezer Noir Duane Swierczynski, Laura Lippman, ... Busted Flush Press, 2006 - 385 pages average customer review:based on 7 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Aging ain't for sissies!

And if you don't believe that, then read this fabulous book and have a lesson or two in aging gracefully. When you're younger, you don't think much about what it means to grow old. And then suddenly, one day, you wake up and realize you're now in that age category that automatically brands you as OLD. Like hell. I'm way more alive and with it now than I was 50 years ago!

But you don't have to take my word for it. Not when these 27 very gifted writers are just waiting to tell you all about it. Of course, as is the way with anthologies, some of these stories are more equal than others. My very favorite is Bill Crider's `Cranked'. Read it and you'll not wonder why it was nominated for several very prestigious awards and has so far brought home one of them. It's truly marvelous.

But then, so is Stuart MacBride's `Daphne McAndrews and the Smack-Head Junkies'. Never heard of `cozy noir?' It's entirely too much, and besides, there's even a recipe included! Honest.
Laura Lippman's `Femme Fatale' is my kind of woman, or maybe the one I wish I could be, if I had her kind of guts. Another classy dame lives in `Policy' by Megan Abbott. Or consider Charlie Stella's `Geezer Tricks', or `The Deadsters' by Robert Ward. Trust me, you have to live a reasonably long time to be as smart as these oldsters are! (I mean the characters, not necessarily the authors!)

There's deception and loyalty, coupled with love and revenge. There's patience and impetuosity, sometimes both in the same story. But the major ingredient throughout is creativity, amply displayed in these 27 stories. Bravo to the editor, Duane Swierczynski, and Busted Flush Press. More, more! Please, sirs, more!

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Short Stories to Know and Love

Okay, yes, there are a lot of typos in this book. But so what? The stories are great! I just spent the weekend ripping through them, and as a 51 year old woman staring into the face of ungraceful old age, this book is a gift from Heaven. Or maybe that other, much hotter place. It is so refreshing to read stories that don't just dismiss people over 40 as being irrelevant or worse (gag) "pinch-the-sagging-cheek cute". Or don't mention anyone over 50 at all. There is nothing sexier than a 78-year-old guy with a gun. And I've always been a sucker for a good revenge story. This collection has a wide variety and while I may have cheated and skipped one or two that just didn't grab me, I don't hold that against the book.
I'm just glad that there seems to be a resurgance of short stories.
Let's hope there is a volume 2 next year, and the year after...

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Black Diamonds

What a terrific anthology - kudo's to editor/author Duane Swierczynski for compiling this collection of short stories that define noir - hardboiled gems written with cracked asphalt and broken beer bottles; brown paper bags with cold cash or cheap whiskey or untraceable .38s. I found many of my favorite authors here - Bruen, Burton, Cotterill, Stella, Brewer, Gischler, Doolittle, and of course Swierczynski, but also some vets and new faces I haven't discovered, but will be reading soon.

While it's hard to award medals in such a rarefied crowd, Ken Bruen's typically dark, bleak and depressing "Old Gun" will fray the edges of your conscious for weeks to come. Milton T. Burton's honey-smooth prose flows easily from a master story teller in "Encore", in neat contrast to Bruen's lean and jagged writing, even though both carry unshakable images of despair without redemption. Victor Gischler's "Duffers of the Apocalypse" is black humor as clever as it is dark, and Robert Ward's macabre "The Deadsters" could as easily show up in a collection of top notch horror. Colin Cotterill's wily Laotian Dr. Siri Paiboun, protagonist of four outstanding Cotterill novels, makes an appearance in author's typically light, well crafted "Has Anyone Seen Mrs. Lightswitch", and Charlie Stella hones his Brooklyn street smart chops with "Geezer Tricks", a story of the phone sex industry as moving as it is cynically funny. And while most noir crime fiction is about tough guys, Swierczynski's mix is liberally and effectively laced with savvy and calculating old broads - notably Laura Lipman's "Femme Fatale", "Policy" by Megan Abbot, Stuart MacBride's "Daphne McAndrews and the Smack-Head Junkies", and the Hitchcockian "Pros and Cons" by Donna Moore. Being noir, irony takes center stage, and none do it better than Swierczynski's own "Say Goodnight to the Bad Guy", the venerable Bill Crider's "Cranked", Steve Brewer's "Payoff", and Sean Doolittle's "The Necklace", a crafty and well told tale of age and wisdom trumping youth an inexperience which, if pressed, may be the best of this elite bunch.

So take it from a bona fide geezer - this is crime fiction in it's finest form - an unbeatable bargain of over two-dozen hard hitting dramas of crime, passion, and poignancy from a gang that may be damn near dead, but are certainly far from over the hill.

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Damn Near Perfect

Every story in this gem of a volume is terrific and that's why the stories are getting nominated for every award in the field. Congrats to Mr. Swierczynski for recruiting such a good group of writers.

GREAT COLLECTION OF NOIR

If you like noir or are just looking into this genre I highly recommend this collection of stories. The writing is superior in each of the tales and they will introduce you to some great writers who may not be familiar names to you. All of the protagonists are very mature, to put it gently. It's great to see older people getting their due when it comes to smarts and guts.

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Hard-boiled story collection, featuring original ''geezer noir'' tales by Jeff Abbott, Megan Abbott, Charles Ardai, Ray Banks, Mark Billingham, Steve Brewer, Ken Bruen, Milton Burton, Reed Farrel Coleman, Colin Cotterill, Bill Crider, Sean Doolittle, Victor Gischler, Allan Guthrie, John Harvey, Simon Kernick, Laura Lippman, Stuart MacBride, Donna Moore, Zoë Sharp, Jenny Siler, Jason Starr, Charlie Stella, Duane Swierczynski, Robert Ward, Sarah Weinman and Dave White.

reviews: page 1, 2

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