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Book Overview
Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.
Featuring stories by: Raymond Chandler, Paul Cain, James Ellroy, Leigh Brackett, James M. Cain, Chester Himes, Ross MacDonald, Walter Mosley, Naomi Hirahara, Margaret Millar, Joseph Hansen, William Campbell Gault, Jervey Tervalon, Kate Braverman, and Yxta Maya Murray.
From the introduction by Denise Hamilton:
"Los Angeles is a young city. As recently as the 1860s, it was still a dusty Spanish pueblo where the Zanjero who regulated the water flow from the LA River earned more than the mayor. Unlike the eastern seaboard, whose world of arts and letters predates the American Revolution, Los Angeles literature bloomed late. But our scant history and tradition freed us up to create new myths. We made it up as we went along . . .
"Throughout this anthology, characters will swill bootleg liquor, take bribes, get hooked on morphine, work as grifters, taxi-dancers, and hired guns, hang out at speakeasies and soda fountains, and betray their lovers. Nobody dies naturally . . . Inevitably, some of the earlier stories reflect the racism, homophobia, and religious prejudices of their times. But it's important that crime fiction was the first to liberate language from the parlors of 'proper' society. As Raymond Chandler told his publisher in explaining his use of barroom vernacular: 'I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks.'"
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