Birmingham Noir by Joel Lane (ed)

Birmingham Noir

Joel Lane (ed)

A grim view of the underside of modern society. Set in Birmingham, but universal themes - alienation, exploitation, loss. Each story has a different slant, but the overall feeling of bleakness stays wih you.

Extract
It didn't take long for whispers to become fly-posters. The day before the body was found he was a nameless, homeless enigma in beige. The day after he was Gregory Masters from one of the housing association flats by the athletics stadium. He had no job, no wife, no children, his place was filthy and, according to one of the checkout dawdlers at the supermarket, he'd always looked at kids in a funny way .... It was ineffectual chatter, but a word to the wrong husband or son, a word to the wrong man with nothing to hunt or kill since technology had taken over ... Chico thought it really was that fine a balance from walking the earth to lying under it.
Parallels
  • Short Stories by Raymond Chandler
  • Anything by Derek Raymond
  • Crime in the City by Martin Edwards (ed)
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Violence
Explicit sexual Content