San Francisco Noir 2: The Classics

By Lex Croucher and Peter Maravelis

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: Ambrose Bierce, Frank Norris, Mark Twain, Jack London, Dashiell Hammett, Fletcher Flora, Bill Pronzini, Joe Gores, Don Herron, Ernest J. Gaines, Marcia Muller, Oscar Pe aranda, Janet Dawson, Seth Morgan, Craig Clevenger, William T. Vollmann, and John Shirley.

From the introduction by Peter Maravelis:

"San Francisco is a town made for noir. Long before Hammett's muse seduced him with fog and mist to pen The Maltese Falcon, European explorers and Christian missionaries had already laid the groundwork for the genre. Just ask the Ohlone indigenous peoples. The city's history is a shadowy one. It is founded upon the spilling of blood . . .

With the release of the first volume of San Francisco Noir, we brought together a team of seasoned writers to compose original works that gave the reader a sinister sense of the city. The success of that volume was encouraging and we have returned with a new task at hand: to present a collection of classic reprints, some hitherto buried by the passage of time, which depict a town riddled by inequity from its very beginnings . . .

We see San Francisco reflected in these tales. A city haunted by the specters of its past--a past that is quickly fleeting, leaving little trace as it disappears into oblivion. Perhaps the final vestiges of this town will someday be found in this handy little volume of pulp. Enjoy it while you can, before it, too, returns to dust."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1933354658
• ISBN13: 9781933354651
• Release Date: February 2009
• Publisher: Akashic Books, Ltd.
• Length: 300 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.2" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Superior entry in the series

Personally, I found this anthology great reading all the way through. I have a long history with SF, so that might help. True, the old classics are wonderful, but the excerpt from "Homeboy" alone ("Street Court") is worth the price of the book. Vollman's nightmarish "The Woman Who Laughed" is another standout from an author who is arguably the greatest living writer in the US. This surreal gem ironically captures the reality of the Tenderloin street. Joe Gores's take on the death penalty is tone-perfect, and persuasively argues that this barbaric holdover diminishes everyone. And it doesn't get any more "noir" than Fletcher Flora's 1953 story, "The Collector Comes After Payday," or Bill Pronzini's "Souls Burning." In general, this is an exceptionally strong collection in the "Noir" series, and that has a lot to do with the fact that, even today, SF is Noir City. Just look down any alleyway, in Chinatown, in the Mission, South of the Slot, the Tenderloin...its all there, and always has been.