Houston Noir [Paperback]

Akashic Bookss long-running Noir Series tasks writers with imagining the dark sides of their communities, spinning gritty, shocking tales atop the local landscape. Recently the publisher tapped writer and former Houston poet laureate Gwendolyn Zepeda to serve as editor on a collection of stories about her native Bayou City. The end result is Houston is a city on the rise when it comes to crime fictionsomething about all those lonely highways, gravity-defying overpasses, and drastic urban sprawl (and of course, the crime rate) make Houston a perfect setting for noir. This port city of close to five million residents is ready for a new reputation as a world capital of literature, and were here to support Akashics new collection of noir tales from Texass most complex city. With sprawl and serial killers, Editor Gwendolyn Zepeda has cannily divided the collection into four separate areas of the city, which only serves to multiply a readers certainty: Like the sodden sheet covering a much-lacerated corpse, all of Houston is pretty much dripping with crime. Best to experience it, we suggest, only between the covers of this new paperback. Zepedas introduction notes her hometowns unique features, including the absence of any zoning laws, making Houston culturally diverse, internally incongruous, and ever-changing . . . Noir aficionados will be pleased.