Montana Noir

Description

Montana is a state that many Americans know very little about, but its criminal dimensions can sometimes run as deep as anywhere else in the country. Whether the setting is urban (or what passes for urban in Montana) or rural, or somewhere in between, the stories in this volume bring the full state to life...or death. Featuring brand-new stories by: David Abrams, Caroline Patterson, Eric Heidle, Thomas McGuane, Janet Skeslien Charles, Sidner Larson, Yvonne Seng, James Grady, Jamie Ford, Carrie La Seur, Walter Kirn, Gwen Florio, Debra Magpie Earling, and Keir Graff.

James Grady was born and raised in Shelby, Montana. His first novel, Six Days of the Condor, became the iconic movie starring Robert Redford.Keir Graff was born and raised in Missoula, Montana. He is the author of four novels for adults (most recently The Price of Liberty), and two novels for middle-graders. Graff now lives in Chicago, where he is the executive editor of Booklist.

These well-told tales offer an engrossing snapshot of Montana's fabled literary landscape. Every one, a worthy read. --Lively Times The stories represent Montana in all its variety: the people; the land; the weather and its physical and psychological effects; social, cultural, and political issues; sexism and racism; Native American vs. White conflicts; urban vs. rural concerns; and more...If the intent of the Akashic Noir series is to capture the uniquely dark spirit of a place, then Montana Noir certainly succeeds. --Popular Culture Association/Mystery & Detective Fiction Thirteen original stories plus a reprint by Thomas McGuane cover the Big Sky State in this thoroughly entertaining Akashic anthology, from desperate writing students in Missoula to a van of itinerant strippers working the Hi-Line paralleling the Canadian border. --Publishers Weekly 'Grit' is the best description of the collection of short stories compiled in Montana Noir because every single story has a thick skin of brutality, skeeviness, violence and just a dash of horror that makes the collection exceptionally good...An impressive set of works from a variety of writers that deserves to be read by many, especially those who want to lose themselves in the darkness of a Montana winter night. --Missoulan If Montana Noir--the new short fiction anthology from Akashic Books released Sept. 5--seeks to teach us anything, perhaps it's that the Big Sky has always been home to its share of dirty deeds. --Missoula Indepdendent From Polson to Glendive, Shelby to downtown Billings, the book ties together many of the state's best writers with stories from the seedier side of life. --Great Falls Tribune Who would have imagined that murder and mayhem could be so much fun? In Montana Noir, a new collection of hardboiled short stories, 14 writers jump with evident joy into tales teeming with dead bodies, guns, strippers, booze, meth, weed and problematic stores of cash. And they take us to unexpected places, from the rough parts of Great Falls to a depressing corner of Billings Heights, from the loneliest stretches of the Hi-Line's Highway 2 to the vomit-stained sidewalk in front of the Party Palace in Butte. --Last Best News Montana may not have the back alleys so common to noir but it has western justice which can be quick, brutal and final and that is as satisfying as anything found in the urban streets that typically attract the dark beauty of the noir genre. --New York Journal of Books Montana Noir reveals that even Big Sky Country works just fine as a landscape for downbeats and deadbeats, cynics and gamblers, posers and schemers. This is a diverse collection with many hits...Noir isn't confined to a place. It's a state of being. It follows humanity wherever humanity wanders. And Montana Noir gives the genre more definition. --Don't Need a Diagram (Mark Stevens blog)