Starred Review. There's a dark side to most places, even California's sunny Orange County, Edgar-winner T. Jefferson Parker observes in his foreword to this outstanding entry in Akashic's noir series, one of the stronger of the all-original anthologies. The crisp, often seductive prose of the 14 contributors, most of them relatively unknown, is a tribute to the critical judgment of the editor, whose own assured story, The Performer, involves a heist at a dog food factory that ends with more than one surprise. Robert Ward, a writer-producer for such TV shows as Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice, offers some wicked twists in Black Star Canyon, in which a fictional alter ego gets bounced from the program he created. Gordon McAlpine uses his narrator's job as a security officer at Disneyland in The Happiest Place as an effective catalyst for a classic noir plot of betrayal. Other notable tales include Susan Straight's Bee Canyon and Dick Lochte's The Movie Game. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Gary Phillips is the author of several crime-fiction novels, including "Bangers" and "The Perpetrators." He writes in several other mediums -- from screenplays to comic books -- and remembers vividly the days of disco and the fever that coke, then crack, unleashed.
