São Paulo Noir

Bellotto, who edited the strong Rio Noir (2016), doesn’t fare as well with this anthology featuring Brazil’s largest city. That one of the 13 stories stretches “noir” beyond reason doesn’t help: Jô Soares eats up a lot of space with “My Name Is Nicky Nicola,” which features a bumbling detective much like farcical French detective Jacques Clouseau. Better is Fernando Bonassi’s “24-Hour Service,” in which a senator’s son’s screwup leads the senator to call the governor, who calls someone else, and so forth down the line until a minor functionary gets a call at 3:10 a.m. and begins the arduous task of cleaning up the son’s mess. A hotel maid is a razor-sharp detective in Vanessa Barbara’s brief and effective “Cross Contamination.” An obese woman hits on several unusual weight-loss regimens in Mario Prata’s darkly humorous “Teresão.” A poor young girl’s luck seems as bad and as lurid as Candide’s in Drauzio Varella’s “Margot,” but a knife can solve a lot of problems. This entry ranks as only a fair addition to Akashic’s acclaimed noir series. (June)