Early ReviewersMichael Ruhlman

Cleveland Noir joins Columbus Noir as the Akashic Noir Series continues its tour of Ohio, and navigates the dregs of the North Shore

Featuring brand-new stories by: Jill Bialosky, Thrity Umrigar, Michael Ruhlman, Daniel Stashower, D.M. Pulley, J.D. Belcher, Alex DiFrancesco, Miesha Wilson Headen, Abby L. Vandiver, Sam Conrad, Angela Crook, Susan Petrone, Paula McLain, Dana McSwain, and Mary Grimm.

“Cleveland, a city of extremes, is a near-perfect location for these dark tales of deception, violence, and despair . . . All of the stories are tied in well with place, and the range of approaches is admirably wide. VERDICT One of the best in a very good series, this title should fly off the shelves.” —Library Journal

From the editors' introduction:

"Cleveland is a working-class town, though its great institutions were founded by twentieth-century robber barons and magnates...  It's this mix of the wealthy and the working class that makes this city—an urban center of brick and girders surrounded by verdant suburbs—a perfect backdrop for lawlessness. Cleveland has certainly seen its share of high-profile crime. Eliot Ness, Cleveland's director of public safety in the 1930s, hunted unsuccessfully for the 'torso murderer' who killed and dismembered twelve people in Kingsbury Run, the area now known as the Flats, then populated by bars, brothels, flophouses, and gambling dens. The famous disappearance of Beverly Potts in the early 1950s on Cleveland's west side made national headlines. The sensational murder of Marilyn Sheppard in Bay Village and the imprisonment and eventual acquittal of her husband, the surgeon Sam Sheppard, became the basis for a popular television drama The Fugitive ... The noir stories in this volume hit all these same notes, and their geographies reflect the history of the city and its politics, its laws, poverty, alienation, racism, crime, and violence."