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Bad Cop, Bad Cop: Jean-Claude Izzo and Mediterranean Noir, by Tom Andes

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That was the history of Marseilles, and always had been. A utopia. The only utopia in the world. A place where anyone, of any color, could get off a boat or a train with his suitcase in his hand and not a cent in his pocket, and melt into the crowd. A city where, as soon as he’d set foot on its soil, this man could say, “This is it. I’m home.” -Jean-Claude Izzo, Total Chaos Crime fiction does setting uniquely well. From Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles to Robert B. Parker’s Boston to Charles Willeford’s Miami, crime novels map out the cities we live in and give us the cities we imagine. How much, for instance, does the popular perception of Los Angeles owe to Chandler’s novels and their numerous adaptions? When I was lucky enough to go to Marseilles a couple years ago, I used Jean-Claude Izzo’s magnificent trilogy of novels set there as a guide. We stayed in Les Goudes, the fishing village at the edge of the city where Izzo’s detective, Fabio Montale, lives. Nestled between the metropo...
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Keeper, fiction by Scott Blackburn

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Y our eyes don’t leave the stoplight ahead. You’re praying it turns green before I hold out a hand and ask for any change you can spare. You might pity me. Maybe you judge me. What I bet you don’t realize is how thin the line is between you being in my shoes and me being in yours. A cardboard sign exchanged for that seven dollar latte in your cup holder. Dominos fall fast. A solid nine-to-five at the bus factory, to sports gambling with some guys on the assembly line, to you-need-to-call-a-helpline because you’re a goddamn gambling addict. A two year bleed-out in my case. Debts fermenting into desperation. Stealing a pocketful of cash from a locker at work. Hawking my nephew’s Playstation to cover what I owed some seedy fuckers who dealt in baseball bats and needle nose pliers. I shut doors in my life. Some forever. So maybe you can understand why I wake every day feeling the acid burn of guilt in my gut for the people I hurt. Maybe that guilt is why I’m doing wha...
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Newton’s Butterfly: An Oral History, by David Rachels

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  Nicholas Freeman, county sheriff: The incident began during the opening hour of Elderwood’s 3 rd Annual Juneteenth Festival when 25-year-old Chance Gondry of Elderwood chained himself to the statue of Ambrose Collingwood on the courthouse square. He had gotten a bullhorn from somewhere, and he started shouting about “principles” and “Galveston” and “the real Juneteenth” and about how people would tear down that statue over his dead body, which didn’t make any sense because nobody had said anything about tearing down the statue. Everybody was just trying to enjoy the festival, and Chance was definitely making that hard to do. Will Prescott, the accused: Chance Gondry was an asshole, and he was being too loud. I just wanted to shut him up, and next thing I knew he was dead. Thank god I had a lawyer who knows all about science. Ephraim Foster, mayor: It was a terrible, terrible tragedy, really, really terrible. He was such a fine young man, and in the prime of his life, too. Th...
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ALL

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ALL: New story posting tomorrow not today. Thanks for your patience.
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Sugar Pie Honey Bunch, fiction by Steve Liskow

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  F rank bent Mandy over the counter, one hand clamped over her mouth and his other groping under her skirt. I came in the back door, the key in one hand and the trash barrel in the other, and saw the fluorescent light reflecting off the tears on Mandy’s cheeks and casting jagged shadows on Frank’s face. Before they could see me, I pushed the door open again so it slammed behind me. By the time I mounted the stairs to the store proper, Mandy was gone and Frank held the day’s receipts. He nodded at me, his eyes like cinders. “All the registers are cashed out, Jerry, so you can take off.” I dropped the keys on the counter and went back downstairs for my jacket. I waited until Mandy appeared from the restroom, her face a frozen mask except for her eyes. “I saw,” I whispered. “Are you all right?” “Compared to what?” She was a year older than me, and a few inches shorter. Even in the flats the store made all the women wear, she had beautiful brown legs. I smelled fear...
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