Akashic Books 2011
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Pittsburgh Noir
In Requiem for a Heavyweight, Jackie Gleason’s character Maish says, "I'm in Pittsburgh ... and it's raining."
Pittsburgh has recently (and more than once) been called the most livable city in America; yet the old image of smoky skies and steel mills spewing forth grit has never quite disappeared. Our history as a dirty industrial center is a part of us, a part of our toughness. The three rivers were the very reasons the city was founded -- river trade, industry -- and the very reasons the views from the hills are now (smoke gone) spectacularly beautiful. The citizens of Pittsburgh are sports crazy because the sports narrative is always a fight -- a contest -- the best story being the miracle of an underdog victory. Not long ago, Tom Hanks on the David Letterman show imitated a crazed, bellowing Steelers fan. The city, perhaps the most livable in America, is an underdog itself, still the easy target of jokes. Black and gold are its colors. Black. And gold. Underdogs do what they have to do.
Rivers, bridges, parks, hills, and back alleys are the settings for fourteen startling stories set in Pittsburgh neighborhoods -- among them Bloomfield, Lawrenceville, Point Breeze, Homewood, Squirrel Hill, Wilkinsburg, Forest Hills, Schenley Farms, the Mexican War Streets, McKee's Rocks. Death and sex, part of any noir tapestry, are to be found here. But so are trickery and toughness. The people of the steel city fight.
Brand new stories by Stewart O'Nan, Hilary Masters, Reginald McKnight, K.C. Constantine, Lila Shaara, Nancy Martin, Kathleen George, and many others.
Publishers Weekly:
Despite Pittsburgh being labeled the country's most livable city, the fictional citizens populating the 14 high quality stories in Akashic's noir anthology centered on the Steel City have the same dreams, frustrations, passions, and vices as anyone else. An apparently straightforward justified homicide, involving a homeowner protecting his attractive teenage daughter, rankles the investigating officers in editor George's "Intruder," but she packs a wallop into the ending in perhaps the volume's best entry.