“If ever a city was made to be the home of noir, it’s Chicago. These writers go straight to Chicago’s noir heart” (Aleksandar Hemon, National Book Award finalist and New York Times–bestselling author of The Lazarus Project).
Chicago’s rough-and-tumble tough-guy reputation may have been replaced in recent years by the image of a tourist- and family-friendly town—but that original city isn’t gone. The hard-bitten streets once represented by James Farrell and Nelson Algren may have shifted locales, and they may be populated by different ethnicities, but Chicago is still a place where people struggle to survive and where, for many, crime is the only means for their survival. The stories in Chicago Noir reclaim that territory, in tales of hired killers and jazz men, drunks and dreamers, corrupt cops and ticket scalpers and junkies, of a place where hard cases face their sad fates, and pay for their sins in blood.
Brand new stories by Neal Pollack, Achy Obejas, Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski, Adam Langer, Joe Meno, Peter Orner, Kevin Guilfoile, Bayo Ojikutu, Jeffery Renard Allen, Luciano Guerriero, Claire Zulkey, Andrew Ervin, M.K. Meyers, Todd Dills, C.J. Sullivan, Daniel Buckman, Amy Sayre-Roberts, and Jim Arndorfer.
“Chicago Noir is a legitimate heir to the noble literary tradition of the greatest city in America.” —Stephen Elliott, author of Happy Baby