Bronx Noir (Akashic Noir)

It may not be brand new but nothing was written in it! Even though I might not need it for a couple of weeks, it came really fast! Thanks!

Gift for transplanted Bronxite. He enjoyed it very much.

This was my third read of the Noir series. I enjoyed this collection. Not as much as the Manhattan book. But, more than the New Orleans venture. Any work that includes 19 different authors may suffer from some inconsistency. However, by and large this delivered. Particularly, I liked Jerome Charyn's White Trash; Terrence Cheng's Gold Mountain about an illegal Chinese immigrant delivery man who found ways to a financial windfall; Lawrence Block's Rude Awakening about a woman who murdered and robbed men she picked up in bars; Abraham Rodriguez,Jr.'s Jaguar about wealthy murderers who came from Westchester to find their victims; Steven Torres's Early Fall about about a young prostitute who met her fate;Joseph Wallace's The Big Five about would be game hunters who met their ends and Patrick Picciarelli's The Prince Of Arthur Avenue about an aging boss with years of service to La Cosa Nostra who was going senile. Definitely a fast paced worthy read.

Short stories aren't usually my thing anymore but S. J. Rozan never disapoints . Clever with a bite-the bullet !

These are very well written stories and I read about 2/3 of them. One night I read just the first couple of sentences of each story. They all start with beautiful classical noir style. The stories are maybe not as crazy as some of the other titles in this series and I thought the volume lacks variety of story telling but I think it often makes a difference if you've been to the place that is being written about and I've never been to the Bronx. I really liked the story about the insomniac fireman going through a divorce.This series is like Heroin for me.