Orange County Noir Book

I traveled to Orange County, California, with my sweetheart a few months ago, visiting her family and her hometown. I'd never been to Southern California so I was intrigued about exploring this strange, new culture! When I saw that a volume of the Akashic Noir anthologies was devoted to this strange and fascinating place, I was eager to check it out and return to the sunny coast.

I find Noir to be one of the most flexible and intriguing genres, often indefinable and yet full of style, offering room for multiple interpretations and differing takes on venerable suspense and crime fiction tropes, taking on gritty realism, humor, and just plain weirdness. The Akashic Noir series has been an interesting take on the genre, filtering these sordid tales of crime, passion, and greed through the cultural lens of various world cities. This one was, unfortunately, among the most disappointing entries in the series I've read so far.

Consisting of 13 short stories set in the contemporary communities across Orange County written by various writers from the region, the collection touted the contradictions of these tales of the dark underbelly of a region known for sun, surf, and suburban conformity, but sadly seemed rarely to really dive into these paradoxes. The great majority of the stories seemed plagued by rote stereotypes and boring, predictable tropes; you know, pointless double-crosses, down on their luck men, and lots and lots of women being murdered. The callous murder of women seemed to be the major theme across a majority of the stories, which became more than a little tiresome. Also, little local color seems to be maintained either, in spite of their name dropping local roads and neighborhoods.

Only a few stories in the collection seemed both to tell an engaging, original story and take advantage of the unique setting of Orange County, specifically Bee Canyon by Susan Straight set in the Santa Ana Narrows, Diverters by Rob Roberge set in Tustin, and Dark Matter by Martin J. Smith set on Balboa Island. This trio told fresh, interesting stories rooted in their perspective places, while the rest felt like they could have taken place anywhere, and ranged from okay to downright awful (ugh, Down in Capistrano and Old, Cold Hand in particular, with their retrograde racism and sexism).