The Dark Side of the City—“Kansas City Noir”

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Today, I got one of those great treats that writers love to receive. My author’s copies of Kansas City Noir arrived from Akashic Books. There is little in life to compare with ripping open a package to hold the actual physical book that’s been an image in so many people’s heads for so long. It’s a beautiful book as you can see from its perfect noir cover. It’s also remarkable for the stories it contains. I’m happy to be included in this collection of literary and mystery authors with excellent writers like Daniel Woodrell, Nancy Pickard, John Lutz, Matthew Eck, Catherine Browder, J. Malcolm Garcia, Kevin Prufer, Nadia Pflaum, Mitch Brian, Phong Nguyen, Grace Suh, Andrés Rodríguez, and Philip Stephens. Steve Paul, Hemingway scholar, award-winning poet, and long-time editor and writer for the Kansas City Star, was the editor who put together this fine collection of stories born and bred in Kansas City and strolling down the darker lanes of human experience.

For those of you not familiar with the Noir Series of anthologies set in various cities and locales (such as Indian Country) around the world that Akashic Books publishes, pay attention. You’re in for a treat. The brainchild of Johnny Temple and Tim McLoughlin, this series bring together accomplished writers of literary fiction and crime fiction—in some cases, of both—to spin stories that could be set only in that city or locale, stories that draw on local history, legend, and atmosphere and are set in a particular location or neighborhood. I love the tagline Akashic uses for these books—“reverse gentrification of the literary world.” That makes this post perfect for my Literary Mystery Novelists series.

As Steve Paul says in his introduction, “Kansas City is a crossroads. East meets West and North meets South here. Since its settlement in the first half of the nineteenth century, Kansas City has represented a place of opportunity, optimism, and ornery behavior.” After all, it was the powerful Mafia families of wide-open-until-the-late-fifties Kansas City that gave us the casinos of Las Vegas. Today, this first of the western cities routinely winds up on lists of high-murder locations, primarily due to the gang crime and violence in a small percentage of the metropolitan area.

Kansas City Noir contains stories set in city landmarks and in quiet neighborhoods to which no one pays attention. It contains cops, petty crooks, serial killers, gangbangers, and law-abiding citizens who step over the line. It contains beautiful images and language, as well as profanity and ugly crimes. Most of all, though, it contains fourteen strong, sharp stories with Kansas City fingerprints all over them.

The book launch will take place at 6:30 p.m. at the Kansas City Public Library Central Branch, 14 W. 10^th Street, Kansas City, MO, and will feature editor Steve Paul and contributors Catherine Browder, Andrés Rodríguez, and Matthew Eck. (I expect to be in Cleveland at Bouchercon at that time.) Kansas City Noir can be pre-ordered from Akashic Books.

Literary Mystery Novelists— BAD LITTLE FALLS by Paul Doiron

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Paul Doiron, Bad Little Falls (Minotaur Books) 320 pp. 

ISBN-13: 978-0312558482  Pub date: August 7, 2012

 

Readers of this blog and the Literary Mystery Novelists series will be familiar with Paul Doiron since I featured an interview with him on this blog after his first novel, The Poacher’s Son, was published to rave reviews and a swarm of award nominations. So for information about this author beyond the short bio given here, check that out.

Paul Doiron’s third mystery novel featuring Maine game warden Mike Bowditch offers the virtues readers of this series have come to expect from the author—evocative descriptions of Maine’s rough terrain, an appealing yet troubled young protagonist, nail-biting suspense, and some of the less-picturesque social problems of the state’s remoter areas.

Mike Bowditch is exiled to the most isolated and undesirable outpost on the Canadian border for the Maine Wardens Service due to his having embarrassed the powers-that-be in the two earlier books in the series, The Poacher’s Son and Trespasser. In his new home territory, his strict interpretation of the law immediately stirs up hostility from local wrongdoers who nail a coyote pelt to his trailer door as a warning and a sinister reminder that wardens were killed in this locale in an uprising against game wardens in the 1880s.

Mike’s supervisor seems as hostile as the community surrounding him. The only human connections he manages to make are with the local veterinarian and a beautiful woman with a gifted but troubled young son. When a deadly blizzard shuts down the whole area, Mike is called to a secluded cabin where a half-frozen man has appeared out of the night, deliriously claiming his friend is lost in the blinding snowstorm. The rescue mission finds a violent drug dealer murdered, and Mike is unable to just assume that the frozen friend killed him as the state police claim.

As the beautiful woman and her strange, gifted son grow important to Mike, he realizes that they, especially the boy, who keeps a secret notebook/journal, are also involved in some way. Under constant attack himself, Mike sees himself when young in the boy and, fearing for the child’s safety, tries to protect him from a hostile environment full of feuding smugglers and drug dealers.

Doiron uses his gift for language that evokes the environment surrounding his characters to make this northernmost part of Maine another character within the book. As usual, his plot is complicated and full of suspense and surprising twists, and his characters are multifaceted and well-drawn, making sometimes questionable choices due to unfortunate relationships. One of the real pleasures of Bad Little Falls is watching the development of Mike Bowditch. In the first books in the series, Mike was likable, but self-destructively impulsive with severe anger issues. In this book, he has the same problems, but he’s seriously trying to control them, not always successfully. Doiron offers a very realistic portrait of an engaging and troubled young man who is slowly and painfully maturing.

Doiron’s first two books have received much critical praise justifiably, but this one tops them in the quality of its writing, plotting, and characterization. Expect more praise and award nominations for this gifted author.

 

Bio

Paul Doiron is the author of the Mike Bowditch series of crime novels, including The Poacher's Son, which won the Barry Award for Best First Novel and the Strand Critics Award for Best First Novel and has been nominated for an Edgar Award, an Anthony Award, a Macavity Award, and a Thriller Award for Best First Novel, and the Maine Literary Award for "Best Fiction of 2010." His second book in the Mike Bowditch series, Trespasser, won the Maine Literary Award for crime fiction, was an American Booksellers Association Indie Bestseller and has been called a "masterpiece of high-octane narrative" by Booklist. The Poacher's Son received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, and Library Journal, and Trespasser received starred reviews from Booklist and Library Journal. Bad Little Falls received a starred and boxed review from Publishers Weekly.

Doiron is the editor in chief of Down East: The Magazine of Maine, Down East Books, and DownEast.com. A native of Maine, he attended Yale University, where he graduated with a degree in English, and he holds an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College. Paul is a Registered Maine Guide specializing in fly fishing and outdoor recreation and lives on a trout stream in coastal Maine.