Boston Noir

Anna Hoyt #1 (Femme Sole)

by Dennis Lehane (Editor/Contributor)

"Dennis Lehane advises us not to judge the genre by its Hollywood images of sharp men in fedoras lighting cigarettes for femmes fatales standing in the dark alleys. . . . [Lehane] writes persuasively of the gentrification that has . . . left people feeling crushed."-New York Times Book ReviewBrand-new stories Dennis Lehane, Stewart O'Nan, Patricia Powell, John Dufresne, Lynne Heitman, Don Lee, Russ Aborn, Itabari Njeri, Jim Fusilli, Brendan DuBois, and Dana Cameron.Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, The Given Day) has proven himself to be a master of both crime fiction and literary fiction. Here, he extends his literary prowess to that of master curator. In keeping with the Akashic Noir series tradition, each story in Boston Noir is set in a different neighborhood of the city-the impressively diverse collection extends from Roxbury to Cambridge, from Southie to the Boston Harbor, and all stops in between.Lehane's own contribution-the longest story in the volume-is set in his beloved home neighborhood of Dorchester and showcases his phenomenal ability to grip the heart, soul, and throat of the reader.In 2003, Lehane's novel Mystic River was adapted into film and quickly garnered six Academy Award nominations (with Sean Penn and Tim Robbins each winning Academy Awards). Boston Noir launches in November 2009 just as Shutter Island, the film based on Lehane's best-selling 2003 novel of the same title, hits the big screen.Dennis Lehane is the author of The New York Times bestseller Mystic River (also an Academy Award–winning major motion picture); Prayers for Rain; Gone, Baby, Gone (also a major motion picture); Sacred; Darkness, Take My Hand; A Drink Before the War, which won the Shamus Award for Best First Novel; and, most recently, The Given Day. A native of Dorchester, Massachusetts, he splits his time between the Boston area and Florida.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Mystery, Noir, Crime, Anthologies, Thriller

242 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2009

About the author

Dennis Lehane (born Aug 4th, 1966) is an American author. He has written several novels, including the New York Times bestseller Mystic River, which was later made into an Academy Award winning film, also called Mystic River, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Kevin Bacon (Lehane can be briefly seen waving from a car in the parade scene at the end of the film). The novel was a finalist for the PEN/Winship Award and won the Anthony Award and the Barry Award for Best Novel, the Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction, and France's Prix Mystere de la Critique.

Reviews

[James Thane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is another in the series of books published by Akashic devoted to crime fiction centered on a particular city. In this case, the city is Boston and the collection of stories is edited by Dennis Lehane. Lehane contributes an introduction and a story of his own, "Animal Rescue." In addition, he has corralled a number of writers with ties to the Boston area, and they have produced a number of very good, often quirky stories.

MIA is Robert B. Parker, whose Spenser is perhaps the most famous of the detectives currently prowling the mean streets of Boston, and the collection somehow seems incomplete without a Spenser story. The book was published in 2009, a year or so before Parker died, but perhaps he was not asked to contribute or, for some reason, chose not to.

That aside, this is a very good introduction to Boston crime fiction and fans of the genre should enjoy it.

[Dia · Rating 2 out of 5]

The series is such a great idea -- noir stories set in various beloved cities -- but the publisher really should have been much more patient in soliciting and selecting submissions! The stories chosen here beg the question: What is noir? Apparently it's any story that has at least one character who's mean, as that seems to be the only characteristic common to all the stories in this collection. The best part of the collection is Dennis Lehane's introduction, where he characterizes noir thus: "No art form that I know of rages against the machine more violently than noir...Noir rages without much hope, certainly without romanticism or wish fulfillment." And: "The heroes and heroines of noir are usually chasing something they couldn't hold even if they caught up to it. Some part of them understands the futility of this chase even as another part clings to the need for it." This promising characterization of noir is immediately deflated by the first story offered and is consistently left limp, mangled, dazed, and confused throughout the collection. An exception might be the story written by Lehane himself. He gets off a few good lines ("The street signs and window panes rattled, and Bob thought how winter lost any meaning the day you last rode a sled. Any meaning but grey.") and maintains the existential balance between energy and stagnation in his animal lover's revenge story. Perhaps Lehane should've written all the stories in the collection. (Must they even be short stories? Couldn't we have a series of noir novels, each set in a different city?)

I'm just so disappointed that our "everyday writers" -- the college-level Creative Writing teachers and such who contributed to this collection -- seem to be incapable of writing decent noir! Garrison Kiellor and his team have been able to come up with parodies of noir, WEEKLY FOR YEARS, that are far more entertaining than the stories in this collection! I was so excited to see that there are Seattle and Portland books in this series as well, but now I hesitate to risk such disappointment again!

[A · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent but pretty mixed bag, which I guess is to be expected when you throw into said mix everyone from Pulitzer Prize winners (her story was unreadable) to first-time writers (his story was great, classic Boston). Very few of the stories were actually noirish, unless your definition of "noir" is nothing more than "logic-straining plot contrivances." Even fewer nailed a particular Bostonianness -- most either tried too hard and felt fake (the "white" noir of the pedophile priest story was particularly awkward) or tried not at all except to mention a token street name (Stewart O'Nan, I'm looking at you -- and you're FROM Boston!).

The first 5 of the 11 stories (which includes Lehane's, of course) were wonderful -- dark, twisted, bloody, and brooding. This was largely because these 5 were unique; Dana Cameron's "colonial 1700s noir" was particularly awesome. The rest of the stories (save the last) were either totally muddled and incomprehensible or just came off as pathetic rip-offs of Lehane. I mean let's face it, folks, when you think Boston + crime fiction you think Dennis Lehane, and nobody can touch him (PS. try the Kenzie & Gennaro novels if you thought Mystic River was any good). Putting anyone else's stories about Boston's seedy underbelly in a book with Dennis Lehane is like, I don't know, having Michael Phelps swim in the Special Olympics -- pathetic and cruel.

[Joseph Gravellese · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a sucker for anything that tries to tap into the character of Boston, and most of these short stories do just that. The stories themselves are, in my mind, of varying quality and interest. Some sucked me in whole, wrapped up in the characters and their situations and what they reflected about this place we call home; others were not as great, and I skated through them on the strength of the "oh hey, I've been there" moments as cafes and bus routes and stores were described.

Some of the stories were a little too disturbing and depressing for my liking - even knowing what I was getting into given the title and the fact that Dennis Lehane was the editor. There was one story about a pedophile priest that was alarmingly unnecessary. But about half of the stories were really gripping and enjoyable.

There was one story set in Dorchester where an old thug finds a beaten, injured dog and takes care of him & nurses him back to health, then ends up being forced to confront the dog's original owner out who hurt the dog. It managed to be both violent and touching at the same time, and highly amusing.

Recommended for any Boston-lover who's willing to be swallowed up in a dark reading experience for a week or so.

[Taryn Harbert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up with book because of Dennis Lehane's "Animal Rescue". Lehane's also writes the introduction, which ultimately sold me on the book. This series is an excellent idea - short stories focused on the nostalgia of cities. I also bought "Prison Noir", which was edited by Joyce Carol Oats. Each of these books appears to be headlined by a more famous writer, perhaps to bring in readers who otherwise would have passed these books over.

Being a big fan of noir fiction genre I was entertained by the themes of the stories. The book is comprised of eleven stories, broken into three themes: Fear and Loathing, Skeletons in the Closet, and Veils of Deceit. The first two themes made the book worth the purchase, but "Veils of Deceit" was a complete let down. The writing was choppy, hard to follow, and too obscure. That being said, the book as a whole is amazing. I've never been to Boston, but the writers did an excellent job of painting a picture of a cultured, rough, and grainy town consumed with pride and loyalty to its own. This is a collection of stories that are diverse and able to be enjoyed both by those who consider Boston their home, as well as those who've never been. It should be noted that the diversity of this book lies in the subjects, characters, race, premise, and timeframe. Stories range from modern day to the 18th century.

[Tobin Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gotta say, I really enjoyed all but two of these stories (and of those two, one was just kind of there, the other was okay, but not to the level of the others).

Are all the stories truly noir? Well, noir covers a wide swath, yet I still think the genre was stretched a touch with some of the entries. But were they entertaining? Yes, yes they were. So, for that, I'll allow the latitude.

Good collection, definitely worth the read.

[Lauren Bull · Rating 1 out of 5]

This might just be the worst book that I have ever read.

[Janellyn51 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes I wonder, would I like these stories as much, if I wasn't overly familiar with the locales they take place in? While I enjoy reading books from all over, names of streets are just that, names of streets. In these stories, when I read about a robbed bank on Broadway, and heading towards Sullivan, I think, I'm glad I didn't get to Somerville until the 80's, because, by that time The Winter Hill Gang had more or less stopped opening fire at each other on Broadway! Or, I think of how many times I've taken the bus down Broadway to Sullivan to get the T into town.
I really enjoyed most of these stories as Stories. I guess the one that struck me the most was The Cross Eyed Bear. by John Dufresne. I was brought up Catholic. I watched my father take up the collection every week, my brother was an altar boy. We had a monsigneur, I kissed Cardinal Cushing's ring, that seemed like such a big deal. Every Sunday, my mother dressed us up and we sat in a pew, my mother trying to keep the little ones quiet. As a mother of twin boys, finding out about all the sex abuse scandals disgusted me beyond belief, but what upset me the most was how much it must have shaken my father's faith, and I hate the church for that. I loved loved Loved that Mr. Dufresne mentioned Big Brother Bob Emery, just saying the name, I've got The Grass is always greener in the other fellows yard screaming in my head. Anyway. I liked that story the best and felt like, being somewhat familiar with Southie, and way familiar with the Catholic Church, it was pretty much on the money.

I liked the Waltham story, although I can't exactly say why.

Lehane, just blows me away, and I can pretty much agree with most reviewers that his introduction is as good as any of the stories. If you ever get a chance to hear him at a book signing or whatever, go, because he's one of the most entertaining authors I've ever listened to.

[msleighm · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars.

Collection of short stories by different authors, all taking place in and around Boston.

From mom.

Like many short story collections, I found some of these exceptional and some were "eh", thus the four star rating. Though Boston is definitely a subject I could read about all day, after reading these tightly written, well constructed, stories, I have discovered Noir is not a good genre for me. Give me a standard 500 page murder mystery or a Victorian tome with a happy ending.

Read 1/27-2/10/2018

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obviously, I am going to love a book of "noir" short stories, set in my home city, edited by the legendary Lehane, and including stories from authors like Stewart O'Nan, Patricia Powell and even Lehane itself. I even love the map at the beginning of the book, which shows where each story takes place. And it didn't disappoint. Each story had a twist, usually pretty dark, and had a desirably murky ending.

Some favorites:

+ Lynne Heitman opened the book with bang, as *Exit Interview* ever so slowly unveiled the story, a dark twisted one. Delicious!

+ Lehane's *Animal Rescue* reminded me of the movie *The Drop*, where a dog plays an interesting part in an otherwise grim story.

+ *Femme Sole* by Dana Cameron was a stand out, as it was set in 1745 Boston, about a woman trying to make her way alone in a male dominated society. It does a good job of showcasing our long history.

+ It was in "The Cross-eyed Bear" that John Durfresne dove into the darkest corner of Boston, with a story about the Catholic Church and pedophiles. Dark stuff indeed.

+ In "The Oriental Hair Poets", Don Lee wrote the twistiest story of them all, with actions and people turning round and round themselves. Even now, I'm not really sure what happened and who did it!

So yeah, this is a must read for any noir fans, but especially Boston area ones. You won't be disappointed!

[NOELLE · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parts I and II were fantastic. The Dark Island was my favorite. I struggled to get through the entire Part III. I expected the last story (Turn Speed) to be great since it was the finale; however, I had to go back a few times to understand what I was reading. I’m still confused and not sure what i just read.

[Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fairly dark short stories. The last 2-3 were a lot weaker. Some of the early ones were really very good—albeit quite dark.

[Matt Piechocinski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only read Animal Rescue, which is a great short story, and a better one in 20 pages than the first Kenzie-Gennaro book.

[raisinreadz · Rating 3 out of 5]

read for class. idk it’s a noir short story collection…. like some of them were epic and some of them not as much

[Cara Wood]

In the introduction, Dennis Lehane posits that noir is a genre not exclusively of detectives but of working class tragedies - an observation that is now difficult to unsee and a something he defends with this collection of heart-breaking and poignant stories. You don't have to be from Boston to appreciate these but it helps.

[Bruce Warren · Rating 4 out of 5]

The good stories are very good and the others are not terrible. Fun book.

[Michael Beeman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Boston Noir collection marks our fair city’s induction in the roving city-themed noir series, “Book Noir,” from Akashic Books. Already the series has seen collections from Brooklyn, San Francisco, Baltimore, and Phoenix, among others. Dennis Lehane is an obvious choice as editor -I’d be be hard-pressed to come up with a close second in terms of Boston crime novelists. He proves a smart choice, as well, and has put together a collection of noir stories as he defines them: working-class tragedies. In this collection, Lehane explores not only crime, or, as he calls it “skuzzy people doing skuzzy things to other skuzzy people,” but explores what the Boston means to the people who live in, and more often just-outside, New England’s second-place city.

In his intro to this collection Lehane sets himself an ambitious goal. “One of the recurrent themes of Noir has always been the search for a home,” Lehane writes. “Yet the home being searched for in these pages might be Boston, and the journey to find it -however fruitless that goal might turn out to be- is as rich and varied, as hilarious and sad, and ultimately as engaging as the city itself.” The worst of these stories are great noir tales in their own right that evoke the city in a paint-by-numbers fashion (throw in a Red Sox hat here, a view of the Prudential Center there, and, of course, a healthy amount of “wicked,” and your story is set in Boston). In the best, the city itself is acting upon the musician from New York now living in the Back Bay, or the single mother relocated to the suburbs, and becomes the unseen protagonist in the story.

The only fault I find with this collection is that despite the breadth of locations and characters, there seems to be an obvious omission. Lehane writes of the feeling of loss experienced in a “less violent and beiger city”, one being calmed and tamed by progress. Yet we are not presented stories seen from the side of the other. In a city with more students than pigeons, we never enter a campus—high school or college. The collection is free of entitled yuppies, another Boston mainstay. The “beigers” themselves, the affluent upwardly-mobile, the mid-thirties restaurateurs pushing into the south end, the hipsters painting murals over the graffiti in Somerville and Jamaica Plain, and the tourists being guided through the park by a man dressed as Ben Franklin are absent. The part of the city the locals roll their eyes at, but cannot disavow, is not represented. We don’t necessarily need a story to take place on a Mega Super Duck Tour, but it wouldn’t be Boston without hearing their ubiquitous quack.

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book at the library book sale and was eager to read noir for the first time (at least something identifying itself as noir) and revisit the capital of my home state. Boston is a fantastic setting for noir.

Much of what I have to say about this book has been said by others.

I like the Introduction more than any story in the collection. "In Shakespeare, tragic heroes fall from mountaintops; in noir, they fall from curbs." The description of a changing Boston on pages 12-13 is excellent. "As the city continues to lose its old-school parochialism and over immigrant tribalism, its also losing a lot of its character." "The Italian tongues of the North End are being phased out by voices questioning why there's no Crate and Barrel beside the Paul Revere House."

Based on the Introduction, I expected more grit and more "working class tragedy."
"Noir is a genre of loss, of men and women unable to roll with the changing times, so the changing times instead roll over them."
"No art form rages against the machine more violently than noir."
"But Boston gives noir the strain of humor you never expect, which comes at you from directions you could never predict."
The stories in this collection don't live up to the expectation created here. In fact, some of the stories seem to have twists at the end that make them the antithesis of noir, as defined here.

The collection is also incredibly uneven. A few are well-written; most aren't. A few are compelling; most aren't.

[Ananya Ghosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like I have always maintained, I'm a sucker for short stories and I had been pining to read this for a long time for the description at the back fascinated me. And I am a person who reads the introductions, acknowledgements, foreword, everything there is. And in this one, I was drawn in by the introduction by Dennis Lehane. It was so good, it set the pace for me and pulled me in deeper. However, as I began the first story, I was a little confused as to what was going on, but by the end of it, I loved it.

However, due to a reading slack and lack of mood, maybe, I couldn't complete the book and hoped I could pick it up again to finish it, but no such luck yet for it was a library copy. I have read the first few stories and as far as I can remember, I liked all of them, the one where a guy rescues a dog, the kidnapping of a child one, and one widowed woman gaining control of a bar that she had previously owned with first her father and then her husband despite all odds. I think these are the only ones I distinctly remember, but I think I have read about 6-7 of the first stories.

I hope I can find it gain to go back to it.

[Kasandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dennis Lehane's intro and story are the best parts of this, but every piece brought a bit of home back to me, and the first few were very, very good. The stories seem to get progressively less well-written and less interesting as one goes on. Njeri's story was so poorly written, so abruptly ended, and so gratuitously spiked with sex at the end that I have to wonder how it EVER got published anywhere. I guess being nominated for a Pulitzer means people think you can write anything well, whether that's true or not. I digress, though. Aside from the one bad story out of the 11, this is a good collection, a fast read, and a certain prompt for Beantown homesickness.

[Sean Donnelly]

I tracked this down solely due to Dennis Lehane's 'Animal Rescue'.
The sharp, tersely written short story that influenced that fantastic Tom Hardy film called 'The Drop'.
Despite the film being shot in Brooklyn.
James Gandolfini's posthumously released final act.
But it wasn't really a vehicle for him.
It was all Tom Hardy's minimalist performance.
Still reading this ...
Brilliant thus far. Will update when I'm done.
And btw = this stuff is fantastic Quarantine readings.

[Heather Costa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much like what the other reviewers have stated. The first stories were really good. Exit Interview, Femme Sole, Dark Island and Animal Rescue. Towards the end I just didn't think it had the same quality. The Hair Poets and The Collar I was just thinking to myself........."Really this got published?"

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's some good stuff here, and some not quite as good stuff. No surprise that I liked the Lehane story best, and while I didn't quite enjoy the historical fiction piece when I read it, I have thought about it a few times since then. Also--what's with dogs in noir?

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were only about 3 stories in here, I think, that were worth the price of admission. Stewart O'Nan's was pretty good and John Dufresne's story was gorgeous. Both very impressive authors who's work I will now look for.

[Carla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dennis Lehane's Animal Rescue is included (it is also in USA Noir) so that's one fantastic story. Another is John DuFresne's moving and frightening "The Cross-Eyed Bear." I read that one twice. Boston, with its ethnic pockets, turns out to be a rich source for noirish stories.

[Steph (loves water) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic...four and a half stars. The stories are all incredible, but the winner is Dennis Lehane's "Animal Rescue." Awesome.

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a mediocre collection of short stories as a whole. The stories by Dennis Lehane and John Dufresne were the better ones.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ended on a low point--I didn't care for the last two stories.

[Fred · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Drop" is one of my favorite movies, this book's short-story "Animal Rescue", was used for the movie.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Editor Dennis Lehane offers an introduction which sets the context for this collection of stories, noting that Boston has had it's own particular culture that informs its version of noir but the sands are shifting as the city gets gentrified. This anthology offers a strong set of stories that lend a sense of Boston neighborhoods and some characters who cut corners and touch the dark side.

I'll mention a couple I particularly liked, but different readers might have other choices, since there's a lot of good writing here. Lehane's story, Animal Rescue, tells a tale of a guy named Bob, a bartender, who hears the sounds of a dog in a dumpster. He picks the dog out and isn't sure what to do. A woman's voice asks what he's doing -- she says he dipping into her trash -- and he tells about the puppy he'd just found there. It turns out they have a common friend -- a local parish priest -- and she (Nadja) invites him to bring the dog up and helps clean the dog up. The story goes on -- Bob's got a good heart and eventually takes the dog in, but needs a lot of advice. Another character in the neighborhood, Eric, later threatens the dog and plans other shenanigans, so Bob has some decisions to make the story proceeds to its conclusion.

Another story I liked was The Oriental Hair Poets from Don Lee. Toua Xi0ng is an ex-cop, who's now a private investigator and has fallen on hard times. He takes on a client Marcella Ahn, a poet, who asks him to check on the strange behavior of another woman, who rents one of Ms. Ahn's apartments in Cambridge. Toua starts to investigate and soon meets the other woman, Caroline Yip, who is an oriental woman with long dark hair. He finds he likes her and his concept of professional boundaries starts to sag, especially since she doesn't seem to have any of the negative characteristics ascribed to her by Ms. Ahn. Toua soon gets in way over his head as he's caught in the middle of a rivalry between the two women and the story zips along to an intriguing conclusion.

And so the book goes, story by story, in many different B0ston area neighborhoods, each one conveying a strong sense of place and often pulling in the wiseguys who exert their own gravity on the characters involved. This is a good read and gives a sense of how Boston has many micro-cultures, even as the old ways are being overrun by the newer folks who bring along their gentrified habits. This book came out in 2009, so no doubt the trends shown in these stories have continued to evolve. I see there's a sequel, which I'd be interested to read to see what other stories emerge to cover this realm of Boston noir.