Long Island Noir

--"The Shiny Car in the Night" by Nick Mamatas was selected for inclusion in The Best American Mystery Stories 2013, edited by Otto Penzler and Lisa Scottoline

"There is plenty of mayhem for fans of dark fiction in the pages of Long Island Noir: shootings, killings, all manner of brutality . . . Suburbia may be even meaner than the big city." --The New York Times

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.

Brand-new stories by: Jules Feiffer, Matthew McGevna, Nick Mamatas, Kaylie Jones, Qanta Ahmed, Charles Salzberg, Reed Farrel Coleman, Tim McLoughlin, Sarah Weinman, JZ Holden, Richie Narvaez, Sheila Kohler, Jane Ciabattari, Steven Wishnia, Kenneth Wishnia, Amani Scipio, and Tim Tomlinson.

From the introduction by Kaylie Jones:

"The Great Gatsby could be seen as the first noir novel of Long Island--a poor boy who doesn't have two cents to rub together falls for a rich girl who would never marry him. So he makes himself a massive fortune the only way he can--illegally. And buys himself a mansion on Long Island. Despite his fortune he is never truly accepted, never truly safe, comfortable, or content. And of course, she leaves him because he'll never be part of her set.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's mansions of Great Neck and Little Neck are still there, lording imposingly over their lesser neighbors. The American dream of suburban bliss has never died, only grown more desperate, more materialistic, and less romantic as it has shoved its way further east, until now there is literally nowhere left to go . . . The most die-hard fans of noir fiction may find a few of these stories a little gris. Not everyone here is literally down and out, though spiritually, they'll give you a run for your money . . . They are all characters driven by some twisted notion of the American Dream, which they feel they must achieve at any cost. This is real-life noir. These people are our neighbors."