Miami Noir: The Classics

by Les Standiford (Editor), Marjory Stoneman Douglas (Contribution by), Elmore Leonard (Contribution by), Lester Dent (Contribution by), Zora Neale Hurston (Contribution by)

Overview

The long-awaited sequel to 2006's best-selling Miami Noir highlights an outstanding tradition of legendary writers exploring the dark side of paradise.

"The 19 stories featured in the superb Miami Noir: The Classics are solidly entertaining and a thoughtful history about life, crime and punishment in South Florida."
—South Florida Sun-Sentinel

"Miami hasn’t been around for long, as cities go—just a little over a century. But it's been fertile ground for crime fiction almost from the beginning. The evidence is clear in Miami Noir: The Classics...[Standiford's] choices for the 19 stories in this volume are fascinating."
—Tampa Bay Times

"Miami has long trembled on a knife’s edge between paradise and underworld, retirement community and dark web, sunny metropolis and criminal clearinghouse. The 19 stories collected by local author Standiford in [Miami Noir: The Classics] speak to this singular dichotomy."
—Boca Mag, recommended by Mitch Kaplan

"Miami Noir: The Classics dares readers to explore a geography that may be both unfamiliar and unsettling...[The setting] proves as tangible as if you were there, muggy air rising off every page."
—Zyzzyva

"An exceptional treat for all dedicated fans of noir fiction."
—Midwest Book Review

"The 19 selections in this welcome reprint anthology in Akashic's noir series enshrine the dark side of Miami...This historical survey makes a fine case for Miami as a timeless setting for great crime fiction."
—Publishers Weekly

"A collection that shows how far a city can come and still maintain a strong noir tradition."
—Kirkus Reviews

"All these stories embedded within this historical survey, make a fine case for Miami as a timeless setting for great crime fiction."
—Exclusive Magazine

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each volume comprises stories set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city.

Featuring classic noir fiction from: Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Elmore Leonard, Lester Dent, Zora Neale Hurston, Brett Halliday, Damon Runyon, Edna Buchanan, James Carlos Blake, Douglas Fairbairn, Charles Willeford, T.J. MacGregor, Lynne Barrett, Les Standiford, Preston L. Allen, John Dufresne, Vicki Hendricks, Christine Kling, Carolina Garcia-Aguilera, and David Beaty.

From the introduction by Les Standiford:

Despite the fact that Miami has in the past decade-plus added a downtown performing arts complex to outdo all but the Kennedy Center in DC, a jaw-dropping art museum by the Biscayne Bay, an exemplary science museum, the establishment of the world-renowned Art Basel festival on Miami Beach, and so much more...the operative literary form to portray Miami—the essential aria of the Magic City—is spun from threads of mystery and yearning and darkness...

When terrible things threaten in some ominous neighborhoods, in some tough cities, a reader of a story set in those locales might be forgiven for expecting the worst; but when calamity takes place against the backdrop of paradise, as we have here in Miami, the impact is all the greater.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781617758065
Publisher:	Akashic Books
Publication date:	11/17/2020
Series:	Akashic Noir Series
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	191,818
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

LES STANDIFORD, who edited 2006's Miami Noir, is the author of twenty-four books and novels, including the award-winning John Deal thriller series and the works of narrative nonfiction Last Train to Paradise, the One Read choice of a dozen public library systems, and Bringing Adam Home, a Wall Street Journal number one true crime best seller. He is director of the MFA program in creative writing at Florida International Universityin Miami.

Hometown:

Miami, Florida

Date of Birth:

October 31, 1945

Place of Birth:

Cambridge, Ohio

Education:

B.A., Muskingum College; M.A. and Ph.D., University of Utah

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I: Original Gangsters
"Pineland" by Marjory Stoneman Douglas (Goulds, 1925)
"Luck" by Lester Dent (Biscayne Bay, 1936)
"Their Eyes Were Watching God" (excerpt) by Zora Neale Hurston (Palm Beach, 1937)
"A Job for the Macarone" by Damon Runyon (Miami River, 1937)
"A Taste for Cognac" by Brett Halliday (Homestead, 1944)

Part II: Perilous Streets, Lethal Causeways
"Street 8" (excerpt) by Douglas Fairbairn (Little Havana, 1977)
"Saturday Night Special" by Charles Willeford (Kendall, 1988)
"The Works" by T.J. MacGregor (South Beach, 1990)
"Small Times" by James Carlos Blake (Flagler Dog Track, 1991)
"The Odyssey" by Elmore Leonard (Miami Beach, 1995)

Part III: Miami's Vices
"To Go" by Lynne Barrett (Hialeah, 1996)
"Lemonade and Paris Buns" by John Dufresne (Aventura, 1996)
"The Red Shoes" by Edna Buchanan (Downtown)
"Tahiti Junk Shop" by Les Standiford (North Miami Beach, 1999)
"Ghosts" by David Beaty (South Miami, 1999)

Part IV: Gators & Ghouls
"Gators" by Vicki Hendricks (The Everglades, 2000)
"Washington Avenue" by Carolina Garcia-Aguilera (Washington Avenue, 2001)
"Superheroes" by Preston L. Allen (Opa-Locka, 2006)
"The Monkey's Fist" by Christine Kling (Fort Lauderdale, 2006)

Editorial Reviews

09/07/2020

The 19 selections in this welcome reprint anthology in Akashic’s noir series enshrine the dark side of Miami. The earliest entries, from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas (“Pineland”), Zora Neal Hurston (an excerpt from Their Eyes Were Watching God), and Damon Runyon (“A Job for the Macarone”), evoke a backwater on the verge of becoming a metropolis. These early stories command the most interest as they reach into history and pull out long-lost regional speech patterns. Late 20th-century classics are well represented, including “Saturday Night Special,” a spare, tough piece from Miami crime-writing godfather Charles Willeford, and the wry “The Odyssey” from Elmore Leonard, whose ear for a hustler’s speech is as sharply tuned in South Florida as it is in Detroit. David Beaty’s chilling “Ghost” shows how dreamers, scammers, and violent criminals exist side-by-side in Miami, separated by the thinnest of lines. Carolina Garcia Aguilera’s observant “Washington Avenue,” a detective procedural, tracks the city’s evolution as it becomes an international tourist destination and the impact of that change on the locals. This historical survey makes a fine case for Miami as a timeless setting for great crime fiction. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Critical praise for the original Miami Noir:

"For different reasons these stories cultivate a little something special, a radiance, a humanity, even a grace, in the midst of the noir gloom, and thereby set themselves apart. Variety, familiarity, mood and tone, and the occasional gem of a story make Miami Noir a collection to savor."
—Miami Herald

"For such a sun-stoked place, Miami sure is shady. Shadowy, too. Even at highest noon. Maybe it's the heat. Maybe it's the humidity. And maybe, just maybe, it's our destiny...With echoes of Charles Willeford's Hoke Mosely series, the Miami books of Elmore Leonard, the quirk of Carl Hiaasen, who never met a shady character he didn't wanna write, and Edna Buchanan, who seems to know all the shadows, this batch of dirty deep South Florida fiction might just send you packing...your own heat."
—SunPost

"Sixteen new, diverse, and highly entertaining mystery stories pack Akashic's latest city-by-city tour of modem noir...This volume is as solid as the coral rock lying beneath the Miami streets."
—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

2020-07-29
Nineteen classic tales of gloom from the Sunshine State.

Although the stories, all of them reprints, are grouped thematically into four sections, they’re arranged chronologically, and their development over the 90-plus years they span is startling. In Marjory Stoneman Douglas’ 1925 “Pineland,” Miami is largely rural, even wilder in its landscape than the orderly groves of Orange County, which its pioneer heroine abandons for the pine forests further south. Nature is also the greatest threat in the excerpt from Zora Neale Hurston’s 1937 classic, Their Eyes Were Watching God. But in Damon Runyon’s “A Job for the Macarone,” written the same year, people are the authors of their own doom. They lie, cheat, and double-cross each other, and they go right on doing so in Brett Halliday’s 1944 novella, A Taste for Cognac. By the ’70s and ’80s, the focus begins to shift to political and social ills. The Cuban migration serves as backdrop for an excerpt from Douglas Fairbairn’s “Street 8,” and Charles Willeford explores predatory sexual behavior among single men in “Saturday Night Special.” The economic angst of the 1990s is highlighted in Elmore Leonard’s “The Odyssey,” T.J. MacGregor’s “The Works,” Lynne Barrett’s “To Go,” and editor Standiford’s “Tahiti Junk Shop.” And as the 21st century dawns, stories like Vicki Hendricks’ “Gators” and Preston L. Allen’s “Superheroes” are markedly more sexualized, and the hardscrabble Little Havana setting of “Street 8” is reinvented as fabulous South Beach in Carolina Garcia-Aguilera’s “Washington Avenue.”

A collection that shows how far a city can come and still maintain a strong noir tradition.

Kirkus Reviews