Alabama Noir
Edited by Don Noble
Publisher: Akashic Books
Date of Publication: April 7, 2020
Pages: 256
This anthology is part of the Akashic
Noir Series which began in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. There are now over
100 books in this series from locations around the world and featuring many “name”
authors as editors. Each edition
features writers from the area represented which lends great authenticity to
the stories. Alabama Noir is one of the
latest books released and is edited by Emmy Award winning screenwriter Don Noble.
I was immediately impressed with
the roster of authors included in this volume, mainly because of the diversity
within it. Out of the sixteen stories,
five were penned by women and four by people of color. Some of my favorite fiction writers are here
as well, including Ace Atkins, Tom Franklin and Winston Groom. In fact, I purchased this book because of a
social media post by Atkins promoting his story “Sweet Baby”.
In the Introduction Noble notes that
Alabama of the 1960s was dominated by race issues and the civil rights
movement. He notes that unfortunately race
problems still exist and points to the inadequacies in the justice system and
in the state’s prisons. There is movement
towards coming to grips with the past and trying to move past this history as
evidenced by the work of attorney and social justice advocate Bryan Stevenson and
the establishment of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery.
Noble also gives a brief
description of the Noir genre, using The Maltese Falcon as the gold standard example. The three dominant themes of the genre
include failed romance and femme fatales, greed and revenge, each with varying
amounts of violence mixed in. This
anthology contains excellent examples of all three, with the added dimensions
of racial discord and social inequality mixed in.
I enjoyed all of the stories, but I
did have a few favorites. The first was “Deep
Water, Dark Horizons” by Suzanne Hudson, a native of Georgia but a longtime
resident Mobile and Fairhope. The story
is set in Fish River. An elderly landowner
and a tenant (who are friends) argue over a broken septic system when the
tenant rekindles an old flame on the internet.
The landowner is described:
“It was
his mind-set, to be wary. The older he
got, the less he trusted folks, even old friends. He had just about stripped
away anyone who ever mattered to him, stripped away with suspicion, always, of
ulterior motives.”
Another favorite was “What Brings You Back Home” by Michelle
Richmond who was raised in Mobile. In
this story a mom and widow whose child and husband were killed in a mass
shooting who seeks and takes revenge on a Senator who voted against gun control. Another example of a superb story is “The Junction
Boys” by D. Winston Brown an author from Ensley, Alabama who now lives in
Birmingham. Here a young veteran returns
home to confront his first girlfriend’s father who sexually abused her. The character’s state of mind is described:
“The information at first swirled
around Colesbery’s head, then he felt that twitch in his stomach that always
came before a mission. The plan materialized
in his brain – how he would do it, when he would do it, where he would do
it. He rubbed his eyes and then stretched
his fingers wide, balled them tight, stretched them again, and settled back in
the moment.”
This is
a magnificent collection of short stories.
You don’t have to be a noir fan to appreciate the great writing and captivating
characters. Even the more violent stories
are not graphic. I was thoroughly entertained
from start to finish. I am encouraged to
purchase more of the books in the Akashic Noir series.
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