New Jersey Noir

August 15, 2011
Oates’s introduction to Akashic’s noir volume dedicated to the Garden State, with its evocative definition of the genre, is alone worth the price of the book. While few of the 19 selections qualify as outstanding, highlights include Lou Manfredo’s “Soul Anatomy,” in which a politically connected rookie cop is involved in a fatal shooting in Camden; S.J. Rozan’s “New Day Newark,” in which an elderly woman takes a stand against two drug-dealing gangs; and Jonathan Santlofer’s “Lola,” in which a struggling Hoboken artist finds his muse. Two stories reflect historical events. In Bradford Morrow’s “The Enigma of Grover’s Mill,” Orson Welles’s infamous broadcast of The War of the Worlds changes the life of one local family, while in Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini’s “Meadowlands Spike,” a man’s confession details the end of Jimmy Hoffa. Poems by C.K. Williams, Paul Muldoon, and others—plus photos by Gerald Slota—enhance this distinguished entry.

October 1, 2011
A tour through the Garden State is no bed of roses in this bleak collection of stories and poems. "New Jersey is a place of secrets, complex, rotten with tangled branching vines and rivers of ancient, heaving blood," notes a hit man in Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini's "Meadowlands Spike." It's also a festival of urban blight, lovingly documented by S.A. Solomon in "Live for Today," Lou Manfredo in "Soul Anatomy," S.J. Rozan in "New Day Newark" and Hirsh Sawhney in "A Bag for Nicholas." Rural Jersey can be pretty spooky, as a young orphan discovers in Bradford Morrow's "The Enigma of Grover's Mill." And it has its own special drug culture, as a Cuban immigrant finds out in Robert Arellano's "Kettle Run." Gentrification is no defense against the state's essential corruption, as an artist entranced by a trophy wife from the upscale part of Hoboken soon learns in Jonathan Santlofer's "Lola." And the shore is filled with bad memories and even worse people in Richard Burgin's "Atlantis." Even the fresh air of the Kittatinny Mountains in the state's northwest corner is tainted by memories of his first family for Reno, who's trying to make a new start with a young wife and her children in (editor) Oates' "Run Kiss Daddy." Only cyberspace offers any relief; in Jonathan Safran Foer's lively "Too Near Real," a disgraced professor tours the world on Google Maps. Anything to get out of New Jersey. With barely a hint of redemption to light the darkness, this volume exacts an even higher toll than the turnpike.

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Starred review from October 15, 2011
It was inevitable that this fine noir series would reach New Jersey. It took longer than some readers might have wanted, but, oh boy, was it worth the wait. As noir fans know, New Jersey has a rich and varied criminal history, from the Lindbergh kidnapping to the Mafia (not to mention the Soprano family). Noir, as editor Oates writes in her introduction, isn't subject matter so much as a sensibility, a tone, an atmosphere, which explains why the contributor list contains such varied names as mystery writers Barry N. Malzberg, Bill Pronzini, and S. J. Rozan; poets Robert Pinsky, Alicia Ostriker, and Paul Muldoon; biographer and novelist Edmund White; photographer Gerald Slota; and Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything Is Illuminated. More than most of the entries in the series, this volume is about mood and atmosphere more than it is about plot and character. Pinsky's poem, Long Branch Underground, for example, evokes the same powerful imagery in the reader as Malzberg and Pronzini's short story, Meadowlands Spike. It should go without saying that regular readers of the Noir series will seek this one out, but beyond that, the book also serves as a very good introduction to what is a popular but often misunderstood term and style of writing.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)