Tampa Bay Noir (Akashic Noir)

June 1, 2020
Bland varieties of domestic and sexual abuse, hate crimes, lost loves, and past dalliances that come home to roost in the form of revenge murders mark many of the 15 entries in this routine Akashic noir anthology centered on Tampa Bay, Fla. In one of the volume’s better tales, Michael Connelly’s intriguing “The Guardian,” an artist summons retired LAPD homicide detective Hieronymus Bosch, an ex-lover of hers, to investigate the theft of one of her most valuable paintings. The clueless house-flipper in Lori Roy’s “Chum in the Water,” the sex mad college professor in Karen Brown’s “I Get The Same Old Feeling,” and the cookie-cutter family of transplants meeting misfit neighbors in Tim Dorsey’s “Triggerfish Lane” all offer familiar victims of standard motives. Most stories fizzle out with reprehensible, unstable characters, predictable plots, and obvious solutions. This area of Florida may be a “native habitat” for “theft, debauchery, and violence,” as noted in the introduction, but readers should be prepared for a petri dish of noir lite.

June 15, 2020
Fifteen tales that reveal the dark side of sunny Tampa Bay. Although editor Bancroft acknowledges that the "Florida Man" meme, which exposes the zany side of the Sunshine State, "found its ground zero around Tampa Bay," only one story showcases South Florida's loopier side: "Triggerfish Lane," in which Tim Dorsey unleashes whack job Serge Storms on peaceful Palma Ceia. Apart from Serge's brief suburban sojourn, Bancroft sticks to standard noir themes. A third of the stories are tales of lost love. Karen Brown's "I Get the Same Old Feeling," Lisa Unger's "Only You," and Sterling Watson's "Extraordinary Things" feature lovers from the distant past whose reunions only bring grief. In Danny L�pez's "Jackknife," a woman calls a recent ex-boyfriend to rescue her from a hurricane. And "The Guardian" summons Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch all the way from LA to locate a stolen painting for an ex-girlfriend. Ace Atkins documents a more recent romantic disaster in "Tall, Dark, and Handsome," whose needy heroine gets taken in by a con man, and Lori Roy flips the script in "Chum in the Water," whose house-flipper gets scammed by a pretty face. Domestic damage also features prominently. A teenager slowly decompensates after her parents are killed in a train wreck in Gail Massey's "Marked." A recent immigrant is befriended by a schoolmate whose family is beyond dysfunctional in Yuly Restrepo Garc�s' "Pablo Escobar." A father uses a spa vacation to try to connect with his teenage son in Eliot Schrefer's "Wings Beating." Perhaps most disturbing of all is editor Bancroft's "The Bite," a child's-eye view of a playmate's mistreatment. Nothing too edgy but solid noir.

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