Montreal Noir

The 15 entries in this Akashic noir anthology, a mixed bag of memorable tales and filler material, reveal the dark side of Montreal, one of the oldest cities in North America. The better stories tend to be translated from French, such as Geneviève Lefebvre’s unnerving “Such a Pretty Girl,” which delves into the disturbed world of child actors, and Johanne Seymour’s “Journal of an Obsession,” which explores the fragmenting mind of a writer bent on salvaging his ego (“I’ve always lived in a void: a black hole, an empty glass, a vacant heart, a blank page”). A highlight among the selections written originally in English is Arjun Basu’s “Wild Horses,” about a shoe store manager who sees horses galloping down his street one night and desperately seeks other people who have witnessed this same odd phenomenon. American crime fiction fans will welcome the opportunity to sample the short fiction of some worthy Canadian authors. [em](Nov.) [/em]