Belfast Noir

September 8, 2014
Belfast, with its bleak, murderous history, at last gets an entry in Akashic’s acclaimed noir series. The 14 all-new stories range from the time of the Troubles (1968–1999) to today. Staunchly local, the fiction largely hails from authors born or living in Belfast or other Irish locales. Ian McDonald, better known for science fiction, offers “The Reservoir,” a brutal tale of a wedding that ends in violence. Bestseller Lee Child, an Englishman long resident in Manhattan whose father was born in Belfast, contributes the unsettling “Wet with Rain,” in which some mysterious men from America trick a woman into selling her house. Not all the entries are profound or gloomy. Garbhan Downey’s jaunty “Die Like a Rat” opens with a description of “Spotty John Norway’s weirdly disfigured corpse.” The selections—none really great, none terribly bad—faithfully reflect the Northern Ireland city’s lack of ethnic diversity.

October 15, 2014
Fourteen stories that explore the darker sides of the human psyche, each from a different neighborhood of Belfast."The Undertaking," by Brian McGilloway, is a tale of a switched coffin and a deadly cargo. The narrator of Lucy Caldwell's "Poison" recalls her schoolgirl obsession with a teacher. In Lee Childs' "Wet with Rain," a house rumored to kill its occupants more than lives up to its reputation. "Taking It Serious," by Ruth Dudley Edwards, follows a boy who won't compromise along his path to free Ireland. The narrator of Gerard Brennan's "Ligature" is a prison inmate who's curious about why someone on the men's side killed himself. Another prisoner is the subject of a reporter's piece about crime and retribution in Glenn Patterson's "Belfast Punk Rep." In "The Reservoir," by Ian McDonald, a supposedly dead man comes to his daughter's wedding and confronts his enemies; a criminal barrister in Steve Cavanagh's "The Grey" serves his client well but at a terrible cost. The teenage private eye in "Rosie Grant's Finger," by Claire McGowan, takes on a case of kidnapping; a more mature investigator gets a 4 a.m. phone call that he knows will mean trouble in Sam Millar's "Out of Time." A sting operation to break up a dog-fighting ring has an unexpected outcome in Arlene Hunt's "Pure Game," and an alternate identity changes hands in Alex Barclay's "The Reveller." The choices made by editors McKinty (In the Morning I'll Be Gone, 2014, etc.) and Neville (The Final Silence, 2014, etc.) celebrate lowlifes, convicts, hookers, private eyes, cops and reporters, and, above all, the gray city at the heart of each story.

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Starred review from November 1, 2014

Edited by two award-winning crime fiction writers from Northern Ireland, this anthology is long overdue, since Belfast is the most noir-imbued city in Western Europe after decades of poverty, bigotry, demagoguery, sectarianism, and murder. The natural backdrop of mist, rain, and dark cloud cover also helps--as does black humor, which is a strong motif here. All the stories are compelling and well executed. Ruth Dudley's "Taking It Serious" comes seriously close to truly portraying fanaticism within the city's complicated tribal landscape. Eoin McNamee employs the juxtaposition of video cams and narrative to extenuate the sense of anomie in the striking story "Corpse Flowers." Alex Barclay's "The Reveller" is a deep psychological bear trap of a story. Gerard Brennan's " Ligature" makes for compelling and uncomfortable reading. VERDICT Great writing for fans of noir and short stories, with some tales close to perfection. It made this reviewer nostalgic and hopeful for his beautiful, brash, beastly Belfast.--Seamus Scanlon, Ctr. for Worker Education, CUNY

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November 15, 2014
Akashic's Noir series, which has topped 60 books in the decade since Brooklyn Noir was released in 2004, zooms in on Northern Ireland's capital city, whose history surely more than qualifies it as a breeding ground for noir. As usual, the book features contributions from writers with close ties to the region in focus; several of them live or were born in Ireland, many of those in Belfast (the book's biggest name, best-selling novelist Lee Child, appears here because his father was from Belfast). The appeal of the the Noir series is that each book operates on two levels. On the first level, you have a collection of mainly fine written stories featuring well-drawn characters and situations; on the second level, you have an exploration of the many sides and personalities of the host city. The books function as literary immersion courses into a city's past and present, presented by writers who are intimately familiar with their subject. A fine premise, executed with remarkable consistency.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)