St. Louis Noir

Since few of the 14 contributors to the St. Louis volume in Akashic’s noir series are established writers of crime fiction, it’s no surprise that the most notable tales are the work of three genre veterans. John Lutz (Single White Female) delivers a strong tale of vengeance, “The Brick Wall,” about a race-car driver who fears he’s in mortal peril amid the traffic on Interstate 64. “Deserted Cities of the Heart,” by Paul D. Marks (White Heat), charts the fall of loner Daniel Hayden after he meets femme fatale Amber Loy at the Gateway Arch. In “A Paler Shade of Death,” Laura Benedict (Bliss House) follows a divorced woman’s unsettling relocation to suburban Glendale and her subsequent descent into chaos. Also effective are Colleen J. McElroy’s “Blues for the River City,” in which four disadvantaged youths sneak into a luxurious theater with larceny in mind, and Umar Lee’s “A St. Louis Christmas,” the best of the drug-scene stories, but on the whole this is a relatively lackluster entry in this worthy anthology series. (Aug.)