Portland Noir (Akashic Noir)
The home of Chuck Palahniuk, Powell's City of Books—and the place with more strip clubs per capita than any other city in America—gets its due in this splendid entry in Akashic's noir series. Portland natives will appreciate shout-outs to lesser-known landmarks, like the weekly showing ofThe Rocky Horror Picture Showat the Clinton Street Theater in Ariel Gore's Water Under the Bridge, while outsiders may recognize some of the city's more famous draws, like the Shanghai Tunnels in Gigi Little's Shanghaied. Standouts include Floyd Skloot's eerily poignant Alzheimer's Noir; Jonathan Selwood's The Wrong House, about a drug deal that goes horribly awry; and Bill Cameron's Coffee, Black, which features not only his series regular, retired detective Thomas Skin Kadash, but also one of the city's most prized commodities: coffee. The 16 stories in this anthology demonstrate that a little rain is never a deterrent to murder.(June)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.