Up against the wall

While I am generally shy about book series, Akashic has something good on its hands with the Noir books. Each book contains short stories set in a city generally associated with the moody darkness of noir. I thought the George Pelecanos edited DC Noir was good, but one of the newest volumes, Wall Street Noir, is an excellent set of nasty little stories.

The book could have been a variety of Bonfire of the Vanities clones, but the stories are quite diverse. There are dissections of the vapid culture of the denizens of the Street, tales of the insane workstyles, back-room backstabbing, overseas hijinks and of course plenty of delusion. John Burdett, author of mysteries set in Thailand, offers up a tale of karmic justice that accepts the Thai version of reality as the true reality. There were a few stories that didn't click for me, but the vast majority were great.

This is the first book in the series to take on a culture, that of global finance, rather than just a city. This helps to thematically unify the book in a way that the DC book didn't quite achieve. Yes, that one had stories set throughout the town, but without the threads that this one had, it felt less cohesive. I am interested in future volumes, some of which are set in developing world cities like Lagos and Delhi, can manage to paint a convincing portrait of the bad sides of these towns.