Santa Fe Noir

Santa Fe joins Phoenix as a riveting Southwest US installment in the Akashic Noir Series.

"There is a real charm to the local specificity of Santa Fe Noir, and it's a pleasure to discover how different imaginations can channel the chiaroscuro energy of well-known places."

--Santa Fe Reporter

"Because each story is identified by the neighborhood or specific location in which it takes place, Santa Fe Noir is a veritable road map of the city and surrounding area. It stretches from El Dorado to the Southside, Casa Solana and Cerrillos Road to the Santa Fe National Forest. The protagonists of the stories are psychotherapists, vagrants, teenagers, and gig workers. They drink and smoke. They drop acid and have sex. And more than a few are guilty of murder (or at least of justifiable homicide)."

--Pasatiempo

"If you picture Santa Fe, New Mexico, only as a sunny, vibrant, colorful Southwest arts mecca, this anthology will shred that image with feral claws."

--Roundup Magazine

"Readers, if you like noir and you like Santa Fe, this is a must-read!"

--Eldorado Living Magazine

"[Gore's] assembly of writers are varied and bring to the book a wide spectrum of perspectives and styles. Santa Fe Noir could have easily gone wrong with a lesser editor veering down the well-trod road of commodified Native and Hispanic stories, but Gore finds us stories about people we know, or think we know, reflected in the shady, more complex moments in Santa Fe. For locals and visitors alike, Santa Fe Noir is a tour guide through the darker side of town."

--Weekly Alibi

"The book's diverse group of writers will provide readers with unexpected perspectives on this centuries-old city and its people."

--Publishers Weekly

"Readers will never look at hand-thrown pottery, heirloom tomatoes, or spectacular sunsets the same way again."

--Kirkus Reviews

"Pure entertainment by a collection of impressively skilled storytellers, Santa Fe Noir is especially and unreservedly recommended."

--Midwest Book Review

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city.

Brand-new stories by: Ana Castillo, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Byron F. Aspaas, Barbara Robidoux, Elizabeth Lee, Ana June, Israel Francisco Haros Lopez, Ariel Gore, Darryl Lorenzo Wellington, Candace Walsh, Hida Viloria, Cornelia Read, Miriam Sagan, James Reich, Kevin Atkinson, Katie Johnson, and Tomas Moniz.

From the introduction by Ariel Gore:

The stories in this collection reflect a fundamental truth about this city: history depends on who's telling it. Too often the story of Santa Fe has been told only by the conquerors and the tourism PR firms. In Santa Fe Noir, you will hear the voices of the others: locals and Native people, unemployed veterans and queer transplants, the homeless and the paroled-to-here. When I asked the contributors you'll read in these pages if they had a Santa Fe story to tell, they invariably shrugged and said something to the effect of, "Oh, I've got a story all right. But it might not fit the image of Santa Fe you're looking for."

I said, "Try me." They came back with the stories that never make the glossy tour brochures: the working class and the underground, the decolonized and the ever-haunted; the Santa Fe only we know...Conquered and reconquered, colonized and commodified, Santa Fe understands--from historical genocide to the murders of family members--the intimacy of violence.