Chicago Noir

I haven't read other entries in Akashic's Noir series, but I liked that the stories in this installment are flagged by location within Chicago's street grid. (The elementary map is useful only to anyone wholly unfamiliar with Chicago.) The collection ushers the reader from South Side to North Side as stories are read. The last story provides something of a punchline to that gag, featuring a setting outside city limits but rooted in an enduring Chicago sports rivalry.

Neal Pollack,
"Introduction"
Chicago's slick transformation under the late Richard M Daley, the preceding time now a lost city and these stories serve as time capsules. Reader advised to attend to the shifting racial identities, reflected in the stories, deliberately sequenced show more so as to move from the South Side to the North Side.

Luciano Guerriero,
“Goodnight Chicago and Amen” | (99th & Drexel)
Ghosts & graves

Bayo Ojikutu,
“The Gospel of Moral Ends” | (77th & Jeffery)
Sermons & stealing

Peter Orner,
“Dear Mr. Kleczka” | (54th & Blackstone)
Regret & accountability; did Leopold really move to PR?

Jeffery Renard Allen,
“The Near Remote” | (35th & Michigan)
Almost Memory Palace approach to capturing interpersonal dynamics.

Achy Obejas,
“Destiny Returns” | (26th & Kedvale)
Different setting than typical noir (Cuban diva in a drag show bar), writing style not quite persuasive and that may reflect me more than anything.

Claire Zulkey,
"The Great Billik” | (19th & Sacramento)
Also an atypical setting, reminiscent of the H.H. Holmes murders. Here, too, the Eastern European (Polish?) prose not completely persuasive but again, I don't hear enough to know.

Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski,
“Maximillian” | (18th & Allport)
Violence and emotion

Andrew Ervin,
“All Happy Families” | (Canal & Jackson)
Baseball and bank heists, and a dose of melancholia

M.K. Meyers,
“Monkey Head” | (Grand & Western)
A neighbourhood bully

Kevin Guilfoile,
“Zero Zero Day” | (Grand & Racine)
Crime lore & bathos over the police scanner

Todd Dills,
“Arcadia” | (Chicago & Noble)
Old con going straight

C.J. Sullivan,
“Alex Pinto Hears the Bell” | (North & Troy)
Boxing and gangs at odds

Daniel Buckman,
“Pure Products” | (Roscoe & Claremont)
Family portrait

Amy Sayre-Roberts,
“Death Mouth” | (Roscoe & Broadway)
"It's easy for a straight boy faking his way around Wrigleyville to get 'lost' and end up on Halsted or Broadway" [180]

Joe Meno,
“Like a Rocket with a Beat” | (Lawrence & Broadway)
Most classic noir story in the collection, jazz and crime. (Fittingly, Meno edits a later volume in the series on Classic Noir stories set in Chicago.)

Neal Pollack,
“Marty’s Drink or Die Club” | (Clark & Foster)
Fight club pastiche

Adam Langer,
“Bobby Kagan Knows Everything” | (Albion & Whipple)
Neighbourhood crime & easy assumptions

Jim Arndorfer,
“The Oldest Rivalry” | (I-94, Lake Forest Oasis)
Bears vs Packers off the gridiron show less

A couple of stories read well, but most of these read like literary Writers (all of them with a capital "W") trying to write genre.

Pretty disappointing. One stand out story by Achy Obejas; the rest fairly meh.