Cleveland Noir

Rust Belt grime runs through each of the 15 stories in this gritty entry in Akashic’s regional noir series. In Sam Conrad’s “Jock Talk,” a gay Native American teen desperately tries to escape his bullying father’s pressure to submit to surgical castration. Michael Ruhlman’s “The Ultimate Cure” finds two lovers plotting to murder one of their ex-wives for her money. Sports and the supernatural mix in Susan Petrone’s “The Silent Partner” to reveal the secret reason the New York Yankees dominated baseball in the 20th century. The anthology’s standouts include Abby L. Vandiver’s “Sugar Daddy,” in which a crooked cop suffers the consequences for corrupting two teenage sisters, and J.D. Belcher’s “The Laderman Affair,” where an impulsive act of violence forces a novice female PI to team up with the murderer she was shadowing. Dirty cops, sex, money, and revenge are the name of the game here—in true noir fashion, there are few happy endings. Anchored firmly in Cleveland’s various neighborhoods, the stories highlight the diversity of contemporary crime fiction. It’s a solid roundup of Midwestern noir. (Aug.)