Good noir also allows the expression of a deeply-held fear many of us give in to in our moments of despair: that there is no black and white in the world, only shades of black.  When a noir piece is of the darkest hue, built on an utter annihilation of empathy or kindness, both sides involved in the battle lose — and the reader sees a  warning against letting compassion die; within that warning is an unstated promise that what we fear can be overcome. In the lighter-hued noir, where strands of compassion and connection are allowed to fight through, the lesser evil overcomes the greater — and the reader feels relief, expiation, hope that from this can come some good, some light to offset the darkness: the promise is explicit that what we fear can be overcome.  And so noir is a talisman against the dark: read about it and you can be protected from it.

Great noir combines truth-telling with talisman-granting into good story-telling, and great noir is what we get once again from Akashic books, in their most recent collection from the dark side, Boston Noir.  The stories in Boston Noir run from darkest to lightest of hues, and occur within many of the neighborhoods and many of the time periods of this old town.  The Catholicism of Boston is well-represented, as are its tides of gentrification, assimilation, and higher education. Edited by Dennis Lehane, it includes a wonderful story by Lehane which sets forth explicitly the fight between lesser and greater evil, with an unlikely but thoroughly likeable hero, Bob;  my heart absolutely went out to Bob when he realizes that “winter lost any meaning the day you last rode a sled.  Any meaning but gray.“  In that one sentence is encapsulated the entire absence of joy in Bob’s life, and anything he did from then on was okay by me as long as he got to taste a little happiness again. Lesser evil fighting greater evil, and I was rooting for the lesser all the way.

Boston Noir‘s  excellent stories include the haunting “Dark Waters” by Patricia Powell, the stomach-churning “The Cross-Eyed Bear” by John Dufresne, and the deeply atmospheric “Femme Sole” by Dana Cameron.  I loved the heartbreaking story of deception by Don Lee, “The Oriental Hair Poets”, and I laughed out loud reading the engagingly cynical story by Jim Fusilli, “The Place Where He Belongs”, about a man unhappy with his forced move to Boston.  Fusilli treats us to plenty of great lines, some serious (“Is a man who no longer matters supposed to understand why he did something?“) and some really funny (“She’d wriggled politicians, businessmen, and academics out of worse situations than this.  Had the Patriots listened to her, the nation wouldn’t think of them as cheaters.  Had Larry Summers, he’d still be president of Harvard.”) In this story, the struggle between evils is won humorously through the spin-method: make enough people think something is white, and it will become blindingly so.

There are over thirty-three noir collections put out by Akashic so far, with twelve more  coming out soon.  The ones that I have read, including the marvelous Delhi Noir and Rome Noir, have been great in terms of giving great noir and in capturing the particular characteristics, charms, and quirks of the region targeted. Akashic’s noir collections offer truth, talisman, and travel: what else could anyone want?