Boston Noir 2: The Classics - Paperback

by Dennis Lehane (Editor), Jaime Clarke (Editor), Mary Cotton (Editor)

"The contributor list is delightfully quirky . . . The collection's unifying element is a deep understanding of Boston's Byzantine worlds of race and class--as seen terrifyingly in Andre Dubus's tale of mill town resentment and pampered preppies." --Boston Globe

Featuring stories by: Linda Barnes, Jason Brown, Andre Dubus, Chuck Hogan, George Harrar, George V. Higgins, Dennis Lehane, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert B. Parker, David Ryan, Kenneth Abel, Barbara Neely, Hannah Tinti, and David Foster Wallace.

From the introduction by Jaime Clarke, Mary Cotton, & Dennis Lehane:

"What is noir and what is not inhabits a gray area. Its definition is continually expanding from the previous generation's agreed-upon notion that noir involves men in fedoras smoking cigarettes on street corners. Noir alludes to crime, sure, but it also evokes bleak elements, danger, tragedy, sleaze, all of which is best represented by its root French definition: black. We used this idea as our guide for this sequel to the best-selling Boston Noir anthology . . .

"The commonwealth is an endless source of fascinating landscapes: the autumnal light spreading across the Charles River; the ice floes in the wintry Boston Harbor; a spring air tantalizing leaves in Harvard Yard; the salty taste of summer as sunbathers peer into the horizon, shielding their eyes from the glare, squinting into the middle distance. Beyond the postcard fabric, though, lies a community populated by broken families, criminal minds, voyeurs, and outsiders. They look like you and me. These are their stories."

Author Biography

Dennis Lehane is the author of the Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro mystery series (A Drink Before the War; Darkness, Take My Hand; Sacred; Gone, Baby, Gone; Prayers for Rain; and Moonlight Mile), as well as Coronado (five stories and a play) and the award-winning novels Mystic River, Shutter Island, and The Given Day. Mystic River, Shutter Island, and Gone, Baby, Gone have been made into award-winning films. In 2009 he edited the best-selling anthology Boston Noir for Akashic Books.

Mary Cotton is the pseudonymous author of nine novels for young adults, six of them New York Times bestsellers. She is also a fiction editor for the literary magazine Post Road, and is coeditor of No Near Exit: Writers Select Their Favorite Work from Post Road. She is co-owner of Newtonville Books in Boston, Massachusetts.

Jaime Clarke is the author of the novel We're So Famous, editor of Don't You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes, and Conversations with Jonathan Lethem, and coeditor of No Near Exit: Writers Select Their Favorite Work from Post Road. He is a founding editor of Post Road and has taught creative writing at University of Massachusetts, Boston, and Emerson College. He is co-owner of Newtonville Books in Boston, Massachusetts.