Brooklyn noir 2 : the classics /

Brooklyn Noir (2004)\b featured originals, but here, McLoughlin mines reprints, allowing him to pay tribute to all the great stories that had given me the idea for such a book in the first place. These 13 Brooklyn-centric stories are slotted into the volume 1 categories (Old School, New School, Cops and Robbers, and Backwater Brooklyn ) but with authors as wildly diverse as H. P. Lovecraft, Hubert Selby Jr., Donald E. Westlake, and Jonathan Lethem. (Pete Hamill and Maggie Estep make return appearances.) It's certainly possible to argue whether Lethem and Estep belong in a volume of classics, or even whether the book is appropriately named (continuing the devaluation of the word noir, here it's a generic dark fiction ). But, though stylistically scattershot, this is good stuff, from Lovecraft's baroque The Horror at Red Hook to Selby's Tralala (one of the stories in Last Exit to Brooklyn) to By the Dawn's Early Light, a great Matt Scudder story by Lawrence Block. Terrific appeal for Brooklynites, but may seem an odd mix to the rest of the country. --Keir Graff Copyright 2005 Booklist

Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Tim McLoughlin, is the perfect companion to McLoughlin's successful all-original anthology, Brooklyn Noir (2004). Contributors range from H.P. Lovecraft ("The Horror at Red Hook") and Thomas Wolfe ("Only the Dead Know Brooklyn") to Lawrence Block ("By the Dawn's Early Light") and Pete Hamill ("The Men in Black Raincoats"). (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Follow-up to the best-selling anthology, herein lies Brooklyn's criminal history as written by classic authors such as H.P. Lovecraft, Lawrence Block, Donald Westlake, etc. BookExpo America 2005 events with editors and select contributors. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.