Vancouver Noir

This “excellent anthology” of noir fiction set in Canada’s City of Glass features all-new stories by Linda L. Richards, Sam Wiebe, Yasuko Thanh and more (Quill & Quire, starred review). For many people, Vancouver is a city of affluence, athleisure, and craft beer. But if look a little closer at this gentrified paradise, you’ll find the old saying holds true: behind every fortune there’s a crime. Hidden beneath Vancouver’s gleaming glass skyscrapers are shadowy streets where poverty, drugs, and violence rule the day. These fourteen stories of crime and mayhem in the Pacific Northwest offer an entertaining “mix of wily pros, moody misfits, bewildered bystanders, and a touch of the supernatural” (Kirkus). Vancouver Noir features the Arthur Ellis Award-winning story “Terminal City” by Linda L. Richards, and the Arthur Ellis Award-finalist “Wonderful Life” by Sam Wiebe. It also includes entries by Timothy Taylor, Sheena Kamal, Robin Spano, Carleigh Baker, Dietrich Kalteis, Nathan Ripley, Yasuko Thanh, Kristi Charish, Don English, Nick Mamatas, S.G. Wong, and R.M. Greenaway.

'Vancouver Noir' looks at the period from the 1930s to the 1960s, an era in which there was intensified concern with order, conformity, structure, and restrictions. These are visions of the city, both of what it was and what some of its citizens hoped it would either become, or, conversely, cease to be. The photographs-most of which look like stills from period movies featuring detectives with chiselled features, tough women, and bullet-ridden cars-speak to the styles of the Noir era and tell us something special about the ways in which a city is made and unmade. The authors argue that Noir-era values and perspectives are to be found in the photographic record of the city in this era, specifically in police and newspaper pictures. these photographs document changing values by emphasizing behaviours and sites that were increasingly viewed as deviant by the community's elite. They chart an age of rising moral panics. Public violence, smuggling rings, police corruption, crime waves, the sex trade, and the glamourization of sex in burlesques along and nearby Granville Street's neon alley belonged to an array of public concerns about which the media and political campaigns were repeatedly launched."Purvey and Belshaw's 'Vancouver Noir' resurrects, in eminently readable black and white, the stories, characters, landmarks, images, lexicon and lore of one of this city's truly colourful eras." - James C. Johnstone, Historian"...If the thirties was a time of idealism, thepost-war world was one of cynicism. The insistence on social conformity and order provided a stark contrast to a seething underworld-if sometimes only in peoples' imagination. Contradictions abound. As suburban living reflected decency and family values, public concern was expressed about juvenile delinquency. Public (and even private) discussion of sex was generally taboo but the sex trade prospered in brothels and neon signs along Granville Street lit up dens of burlesque, booze and gambling.Ladies and escorts began entering the regulated beer parlours in Vancouver through separate doors in 1927. Thirsty working men crowded these establishments after a hard day's work and it was unseemly for a very long time, for women to mix freely among them. By 1954 cocktail bars were established so middle-class men and women could meet in an acceptable environment. Glamour arrived to the city in the form of supper clubs, emerging in the late 1930s and including big-name American acts like HarryBelafonte, Tony Bennett, Mitzi Gaynor, Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald. Still segregation, not integration was the cultural norm as visible minorities lived in separate neighborhoods such as Hogan's Alley and Chinatown, 'sin' was confined to a square mile, and police attempted to the activities of drug pedlars and addicts. Attacking the poor and disenfranchised was common. Stanley Park rancheries, float houses under the Burrard Street bridge and other residential 'blights' to the city cameunder regular attack by civic authorities... 'Vancouver Noir' succeeds in exposing what lies beneath, delivering readers a fascinating glimpse of another side of the city."- British Columbia History

A multicultural nexus, Toronto hosts Indian, Portuguese, African, Italian, and Chinese communities that provide fertile backdrops for Toronto Noir's corrosive expos s. Features brand-new stories by: RM Vaughan, Nathan Sellyn, Ibi Kaslik, Peter Robinson, Heather Birrell, Sean Dixon, Raywat Deonandad, Christine Murray, Gail Bowen, Emily Schultz, Andrew Pyper, Kim Moritsugu, Mark Sinnet, George Elliott Clarke, Pasha Malla, and Michael Redhill.

“American crime fiction fans will welcome the opportunity to sample the short fiction of some worthy Canadian authors.” —Publishers Weekly Following the success of Toronto Noir, the Noir Series explores new Canadian terrain, featuring both English and Francophone authors. Like the city it springs from, Montreal Noir is an intriguing mix of culture, identities, and neighborhoods with one thing in common: the dark side of human nature. This collection presents stories by Patrick Senécal, Tess Fragoulis, Howard Shrier, Michel Basilières, Robert Pobi, Samuel Archibald, Geneviève Lefebvre, Ian Truman, Johanne Seymour, Arjun Basu, Martin Michaud, Melissa Yi, Catherine McKenzie, Peter Kirby, and Brad Smith. “Montreal solidifies its reputation as the epicentre for Canadian noir in a strong new anthology.” —Quill & Quire “Brings together a bicultural roster of talent by some of the city’s best crime-fiction specialists, with tales from the city’s many neighbourhoods.” —Toronto Star “An impressive roster . . . Stories from across the many sub-genres of mystery: police procedural, thriller, private eye, psychological suspense, and hard-boiled crime.” —Montreal Review of Books “Whether it’s the quirkiness of the characters, the ingenuity of the puzzles, or the big hearts inside some of the darkest villains, noir’s different north of the border.” —Kirkus Reviews

2015 Kobo Emerging Writer's — Winner, Fiction 2015 Arthur Ellis Award — Nominated, Best First Novel 2012 Unhanged Arthur Award — Winner, Best Unpublished First Crime Novel What do a necrophile, a missing boy, and an unsavoury P.I. have in common? Private detective Michael Drayton is about to find out.... Twenty-nine-year-old Michael Drayton runs a private investigation agency in Vancouver that specializes in missing persons — only, as Mike has discovered, some missing people stay with you. Still haunted by the unsolved disappearance of a young girl, Mike is hired to find the vanished son of a local junk merchant. However, he quickly discovers that the case has been damaged by a crooked private eye and dismissed by a disinterested justice system. Worse, the only viable lead involves a drug-addicted car thief with gang connections. As the stakes rise, Mike attempts to balance his search for the junk merchant’s son with a more profitable case involving a necrophile and a funeral home, while simultaneously struggling to keep a disreputable psychic from bilking the mother of a missing girl.

An exhilarating page-turner set in 1920s Vancouver post prohibition, when liquor was the fuel driving big business, big government—and major crime. In this spellbinding follow-up to his mystery The White Angel, John MacLachlan Gray captures the spirit of Vancouver in those gritty, gin-soaked days, as the city was remaking itself between wars. Alcohol is once again legal in Vancouver after the failed experiment of prohibition, but pro-temperance sentiments remain strong. Politicians like Attorney-General Gordon Cunning attempt appeasement by establishing the Liquor Control Board, which oversees supply, from the lofty circles of power down to bleak public drinking factories called “beer parlours.” But when Cunning is found deceased, an empty martini glass at his side, quickly followed by Mrs. Harlan Crombie, the wife of a prominent bureaucrat, who falls dead after an afternoon book club meeting, suspicions are raised. Is it pure coincidence that the deceased were both drinking the same brand of “tonic”? Or is it a spillover from American prohibition, where deliberately tainted booze is killing thousands? Fans of The White Angel will be delighted by the return of straight-shooting constable Calvin Hook, frustrated poet-cum-reporter Ed McCurdy and unpredictable, eavesdropping telephone operator Mildred Wickstram, as they pool their skills in order to get to the truth. The result is a clash between temperance activists, the Klu Klux Klan, the Liquor Control Board and global events on the mean streets of Vancouver—a rough little city on the edge of empire.

In this fast and furious crime novel set in 1983, a sex worker named Irina absconds with a shipment of drugs and $300,000 in dirty money, setting into motion a wild chain reaction involving bounty hunters, corrupt cops, low-brow scammers, and her bewildered, straight-laced ex-husband. Add to this devil's brew the intoxicating settings of sushi bars, nightclubs, and New Wave art galleries circa the mid-eighties, and you get Straight to the Head: a beguiling, funny novel that blows the roof off traditional crime fiction. Fraser Nixon is the author of The Man Who Killed, shortlisted for the Amazon.ca Best First Novel Award.

"I don't know why this city sees fit to kill its women." Chelsea Loam vanished eleven years ago. When Vancouver PI Dave Wakeland is hired to find what happened to the missing woman, he soon uncovers a trail leading towards career criminals and powerful men. Taking the case quickly starts to look like a good way to get killed. Whatever ghosts drive Wakeland, they drive him inexorably, addictively toward danger and the allure of an unsolvable mystery. Invisible Dead marks the debut of one of the most acclaimed and authentic contemporary detective series.