Santa Fe Noir

December 15, 2019
Shepherded by Lambda Literary Award winner Gore, 17 contributors offer peeks at the dark side of a city known for clean living with an arty edge. Editor Gore quotes Christine Gledhill's description of film noir as "a struggle between different voices for control over the telling of the story." But the stories in this installment of Akashic's project to paint the world black complement rather than compete with each other. There are straight-up crime stories, like Hida Viloria's "SOS Sex" and Candace Walsh's "The Sandbox Story." There are spooky ghost tales, like Jimmy Santiago Baca's "Close Quarters," Ana Castillo's "Divina: In Which Is Related a Goddess Made Flesh," and Israel Francisco Haros Lopez's graphic short story "La Llorona." Family drama has its turn in "I Boycott Santa Fe" by Tomas Moniz and "Behind the Tortilla Curtain" by Barbara Robidoux. So does love gone wrong, as in Byron F. Aspaas's "Táchii'nii: Red Running Into the Water." But perhaps the most poignant stories are the ones that turn Santa Fe's promises of physical beauty and spiritual healing against it. In Elizabeth Lee's "Waterfall," a spa where clients flock in hopes of rejuvenation becomes the scene of a grisly crime. A pristine Aspen forest turns into a deadly trap in Katie Johnson's "All Eyes." And an organic farm hides a terrible secret in Gore's own "Nightshade." Danger lurks even in the water, as Ana June's "The Night of the Flood" proves. Readers will never look at hand-thrown pottery, heirloom tomatoes, or spectacular sunsets the same way again.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 6, 2020
As noted in the introduction to this solid Akashic noir anthology, Santa Fe, N.Mex., and environs is less the Land of Enchantment, per the tourism slogan, than the “Land of Entrapment,” where characters are inexorably tied to or haunted by the area’s long history and uneasy mix of cultures. One highlight is Hida Viloria’s “SOS Sex,” a traditional crime story in which a property appraiser stumbles onto a sex trafficking racket that ties to a long-ago family tragedy of his own. In a more off-beat vein, Cornelia Reed’s scathing “The Cask of Los Alamos” retells Poe’s revenge tale “The Cask of Amontillado,” but this time set at the 1945 test of the first atomic bomb. For many of the selections, however, crime is secondary or even nonexistent, as in Jimmy Santiago Baca’s unsettling “Close Quarters,” in which a Chicano writer is visited by the ghosts of his ancestors. The quality of the 17 entries varies widely, but the book’s diverse group of writers will provide readers with unexpected perspectives on this centuries-old city and its people.

December 15, 2019
Shepherded by Lambda Literary Award winner Gore, 17 contributors offer peeks at the dark side of a city known for clean living with an arty edge. Editor Gore quotes Christine Gledhill's description of film noir as "a struggle between different voices for control over the telling of the story." But the stories in this installment of Akashic's project to paint the world black complement rather than compete with each other. There are straight-up crime stories, like Hida Viloria's "SOS Sex" and Candace Walsh's "The Sandbox Story." There are spooky ghost tales, like Jimmy Santiago Baca's "Close Quarters," Ana Castillo's "Divina: In Which Is Related a Goddess Made Flesh," and Israel Francisco Haros Lopez's graphic short story "La Llorona." Family drama has its turn in "I Boycott Santa Fe" by Tomas Moniz and "Behind the Tortilla Curtain" by Barbara Robidoux. So does love gone wrong, as in Byron F. Aspaas's "T�chii'nii: Red Running Into the Water." But perhaps the most poignant stories are the ones that turn Santa Fe's promises of physical beauty and spiritual healing against it. In Elizabeth Lee's "Waterfall," a spa where clients flock in hopes of rejuvenation becomes the scene of a grisly crime. A pristine Aspen forest turns into a deadly trap in Katie Johnson's "All Eyes." And an organic farm hides a terrible secret in Gore's own "Nightshade." Danger lurks even in the water, as Ana June's "The Night of the Flood" proves. Readers will never look at hand-thrown pottery, heirloom tomatoes, or spectacular sunsets the same way again.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.