Crazy Town: A Dark Anthology of Fantastical Crime Noir

by Jason M. Waltz (Editor), Peter McLean (Foreword), Michael Ehart

Why do we call it crazy? There are no limits inside CRAZY TOWN. Here you can bet or buy the farm in the same breath. Ain't nobody believin' anyone here's playing with a full deck. Every one's stacked, and in this town, some got less and some got more cards. If you stop in for a visit, you'll find 13 daring folks who step into the dark, then poke the dirtiest corner of it; 13 inquisitive minds who dig into the slime, then stir up whatever twitches; 13 cynical souls who may not be able to save themselves but just might redeem something outta their miserable lives. Ya gotta be crazy to hang 'round these parts. This town? Lotsa crazies; coming here might not be just what the doc ordered. 13 authors deliver explosive, haunted action high on adrenaline and low on morals. Sin, sex, shots, secrets: it's all here in spades. Think Mike Hammer meets Roger Rabbit in Karl Edward Wagner's story "Into Whose Hands." Then take it a notch closer to crazy. These are definitely not Mayberry's streets. Pray they aren't yours. You've been warned.

251 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 30, 2018

About the author

I edited and published numerous heroic titles under Rogue Blades as both RBE, a micro publisher of heroic adventure fiction, and RBF, a nonprofit literary publisher of explorations of the heroic. If you enjoy hard-hitting, fast-paced tales of ringing steel and dark magics found in the battles of lore and myth, updated and written for the modern reader, you should check them out.

Personally, I also write heroic tales. Jason M (with and without that pesky period) are one and the same. Jason M Waltz enjoys sharing tales of heroes who are willing to step into the gap...sometimes to fill it, sometimes to make it wider.

Reviews

[Ty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some might argue noir fiction and speculative fiction are an antithesis to one another, that it's practically impossible to combine the cynicism of noir with the attitudes of the speculative, but I must say this collection proves such notions wrong. Here you will find a solid mix of nearly all types of speculative fiction, from fantasy to dark fantasy to science fiction, a super hero tale, and perhaps a touch of horror here and there. All of that with noir sensibilities, and it works. As is usually the case with most anthologies, some stories are better than others, but I didn't find any out-and-out stinkers here, and a few stood out. My personal favorites were "Out of the Light" by Douglas Smith, "Fortune Teller" by David M. Donachie, and "The Lake" by Joel Thomas Blackstock Jr., with "All Monsters: A Gold Coast City Brief" by Matt Abraham coming in darn close as a favorite, though it's still an excellent tale. This collection was a bit of a stretch compared to Rogue Blades Entertainment's earlier publications, but I believe it not only works in and of itself, but it also shows a publishing house willing to grow and to try new things.