Reviews

London Noir by Ken Hollings, Mark Pilkington, Daniel Bennett, John Williams, Stewart Home, Martyn Waites, Sylvie Simmons, Joe McNally, Jerry Sykes, Cathi Unsworth, Michael Ward, Patrick McCabe, Joolz Denby, Max Décharné, Ken Bruen, Desmond Barry, Barry Adamson

stewarthome's review

5.0

One reason you may be interested in London Noir is because I have a piece entitled "Rigor Mortis" in here, but there's far more to the book than just that. Sylvie Simmons's contribution will instantly appeal to those who like my novels because it features a ventriloquist dummy that seems to come to life (a trope I used in "69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess") and feeders who get off sexually on fattening up women (a kink also addressed in my novel "Come Before Christ & Murder Love"). This Simmon's piece is probably my favourite among the many extremely strong contributions to the anthology, aside from my own of course! There's some punk riffs going off here, try Max Decharne and John Williams (both friends of mine but I'm not biased, I know a good story when I read it regardless of who wrote it). Desmond Barry and Ken Bruen have the drugs angle covered. Michael Ward, Jerry Sykes and editor Cathi Unsworth do the sex industry from various angles. Barry Adamson goes for priests, Dan Bennett sexual abuse.Mark Pilkington and Joe McNally provide the most obviously occult and psychogeographical contributitions. Patrick McCabe and Ken Hollings both do paranoid "terrorists" extremely well. And that covers pretty much all the book, and certainly everything worth mentioning except for the Martyn Wates story "Love". This last features a neo-Nazi homophobe who discovers he's gay (in this instance in the arms of a black drug dealer). Tales featuring this twist have been popular in the UK since at least the time neo-Nazi pin-up boy Nicky Crane came out as gay and renounced fascism. A song from the mid-eighties by The Apostles called "Fucking Queer" is the earliest use of this particular trope I can think of right now. But Wates adds a twist by taking inspiration from current British headlines. All the stories in this book, as well as all others in the Noir series published by Akashic Books, have different writers contribute new and original stories that deal with different parts of a city. And it isn't chance that leads Wates to set his tale in Dagenham, the neighbourhood abutting Barking.