Orange County Noir (Akashic Noir Series) - Softcover

Gary Phillips

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1936070030 ISBN 13: 9781936070039

Publisher: AKASHIC BOOKS, 2010

Synopsis

These noir stories take readers on a hard-boiled tour behind the Orange curtain where a reclusive rock star has lived way too long in his own head, a crooked judge uses the court for illicit means, a cab driver prowls the streets with more than the ticking meter on his mind, where cultures clash, housewives want more than the perfect grout cleaner and nobody is who they seem to be. Includes contributions from Edgar Award winner Susan Straight, Hammett Award nominee Robert Ward, LA Times bestseller Barbara DeMarco-Barrett and Nero Wolfe Award winner Dick Lochte.

About this title

About the Author

GARY PHILLIPS has published novels, comics, and short stories, and edited numerous anthologies. Violent Spring, first published in 1994, was named one of the essential crime novels of Los Angeles. Culprits, a linked anthology he coedited, has been optioned as a British miniseries, and he was a staff writer on FX's Snowfall about crack and the CIA in 1980s South Central, where he grew up. He is the editor of Orange County Noir and the coeditor of The Cocaine Chronicles. He has contributed stories to Dublin Noir, Los Angeles Noir, Phoenix Noir, and The Heroin Chronicles. South Central Noir is his latest anthology.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Orange County Noir

Akashic Books

Copyright © 2010 Akashic Books
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-936070-03-9

Contents

Foreword by T. Jefferson Parker.................................................13Introduction....................................................................17Susan Straight Bee Canyon Santa Ana Narrows...................................40Robert S. Levinson Down in Capistrano San Juan Capistrano.....................58Rob Roberge Diverters Tustin..................................................84Nathan Walpow A Good Day's Work Seal Beach....................................105Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Crazy for You Costa Mesa..............................126Dan Duling The Toll Laguna Beach..............................................142Mary Castillo 2:45 Out of Santa Ana Santa Ana.................................164Lawrence Maddox Old, Cold Hand City of Orange.................................180Dick Lochte The Movie Game Laguna Niguel......................................203Robert Ward Black Star Canyon Dana Point......................................227Gary Phillips The Performer Los Alamitos......................................246Gordon McAlpine The Happiest Place Anaheim....................................266Martin J. Smith Dark Matter Balboa Island.....................................281Patricia McFall On the Night in Question Garden Grove.........................308

Introduction

Behind the Orange Curtain

Coincidence that I was born the same year Disneyland opened and Charlie "Bird" Parker died. A lot of things begin and a lot of people die in any given year. But those two events have stayed with me-given the accident of occurring in that particular year-and they provide a hint as to how we arrive at this collection of all-new, tough, unblinking stories in Orange County Noir.

As everybody probably knows, Disneyland is located in Orange County, the city of Anaheim specifically. When I was a kid growing up in South Central Los Angeles, what I knew of life behind the Orange Curtain-beyond bugging my dad to take me to the theme park-was nil. None of my relatives lived there, nor did my folks have friends in the area. Except for going to Walt's Adventureland or Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, all I knew was that getting to Orange County was too long a trip on the freeway for a nine-year-old anticipating the thrill of riding the Matterhorn roller coaster and realizing the birthright of Southern Californians of driving a car-at least for a few minutes solo on the Autopia.

Now, I'd heard of the Beach Boys and associated their songs of the endless summer with the surfers I'd seen on TV piloting those majestic waves down in Orange County (even though it turned out those guys grew up in the South Bay area of Los Angeles). By the time I was a teen, I finally understood the chuckles my dad and his friends had over beers when they joked about not letting the sun go down on them in Orange County, "where all them Birchers are." Referring, I'd find out, to the ultraconservative, anti-civil rights John Birch Society.

Time and the social evolution of the Southland have brought change even to vast Orange County with its forty-some miles of coastline. I was recently told by a resident of Newport Beach, one of the tonier enclaves of the county, that her district, which launched ex-pro quarterback Jack Kemp to office, went for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential race.

Because and beyond being a GOP stronghold, Orange County brings to mind McMansion housing tracts; massive shopping centers with their own zip codes where Pilates classes are run like boot camp and real-estate values are discussed at your weekly colonic; and ice-cream parlors on Main Street, U.S.A., side by side with pho shops and taqueras. Los Angeles has been and continues to be explored as the place where noir, if it wasn't spawned there, sure as hell flowered. But what about its neighbor to the south? What secrets do Orange County's denizens have to tell ... or hide?

This volume, like coming in from a sudden storm and then being gripped by a heavy riff from Bird's horn, takes you on a hard-boiled tour behind the Orange Curtain. Among those you'll meet are a reclusive rock star who has lived way too long in his twisted head, a crooked judge who uses the court for illicit means, a cab driver prowling the streets with more than the ticking meter on his mind. In Orange County Noir, cultures clash, housewives want more than the perfect grout cleaner, and nobody is exactly who they seem to be.

Enjoy.

Gary Phillips Los Angeles, CA January 2010

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: AKASHIC BOOKS
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1936070030
• ISBN 13: 9781936070039
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 306
• Editor: Gary Phillips