Venice Noir (Akashic Noir Series) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1617750735 ISBN 13: 9781617750731

Verlag: Akashic Books,U.S., 2012

Inhaltsangabe

“Drifter” by Emily Mandel was selected for inclusion in The Best American Mystery Stories 2013, edited by Otto Penzler and Lisa Scottoline

Original stories by: Peter James, Emily St. John Mandel, Barbara Baraldi, Mike Hodges, Mary Hoffman, Maria Tronca, Matteo Righetto, Tony Cartano, Francesco Ferracin, Isabella Santacroce, Michelle Lovric, Francesca Mazzucato, Maxim Jakubowski, and Michael Gregorio.

"Forget the magnificence of Venice's art, architecture, and music, and delve into this tour of the City of Water's murky depths…visions of a Venice not seen in tourist brochures."
--Publishers Weekly

"Editor Jakubowski does an excellent job of selecting a variety of stories that represent all strata of Venetian life, from tourists visiting for Carnevale to criminals running illegal operations in the bay…A must-read for lovers of Venice…the presence of a new and intriguing voices, many of them Italian, will pique the interest of international-mystery readers."
--Booklist

"Sex, food and real estate inspire 14 hot-blooded new takes on crime in the magical city of Venice...Rather than crimes of passion, this collection focuses on the passion of crime, painting its noir in robust tones rather than gritty gray."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Venice Noir, edited by Maxim Jakubowski, aims to shred through our preconceptions of this remarkable city. The 14 writers featured in this anthology of short stories take our travel brochure images of Venice and scatter them like confetti."
--NY Journal of Books

Maxim Jakubowski is a British editor and writer. Following a long career in book publishing, during which he was responsible for several major crime imprints, he opened London's mystery bookshop Murder One. He reviews crime fiction for the Guardian, runs London's Crime Scene Festival, and is an advisor to Italy's annual Courmayeur Noir in Festival. His latest crime novel is Confessions of a Romantic Pornographer, and he edits the annual Best British Mysteries series.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Maxim Jakubowski is a British writer and editor who has lived in Italy and returns there annually. He co-edited ROME NOIR, with Chiara Stangalino, and has also assembled London and Paris volumes for other publishers. His new novel Ekaterina and the Night is partly set in Venice and his non-fiction book of essays about the real cities of crime fiction Following the Detectives has been shortlisted for the MacAvity Award. He lives in London when not travelling the world.

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Venice Noir

Akashic Books

Copyright © 2012 Akashic Books
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61775-073-1

Contents

PART I: AMONGST THE VENETIANS...................................................17Matteo Righetto Cloudy Water Cannaregio.......................................37Francesco Ferracin The Comedy Is Over Calcavia................................60Barbara Baraldi Commissario Clelia Vinci Mestre...............................87PART II: SHADOWS OF THE PAST....................................................103Maxim Jakubowski Lido Winter Lido.............................................123Michelle Lovric Pantegana Santo Stefano.......................................132PART III: TOURISTS & OTHER TROUBLED FOLK........................................155Peter James Venice Aphrodisiac Canal Grande...................................164Emily St. John Mandel Drifter Ponte dei Sospiri...............................182Tony Cartano Rendezvous Calle Larga XXII Marzo................................195PART IV: AN IMPERFECT PRESENT...................................................211Maria Tronca Tourists for Supper Santa Maria Formosa..........................239Michael Gregorio Laguna Blues Porto Marghera..................................256Mary Hoffman A Closed Book Rialto Bridge......................................276

Introduction

Slowly Sinking

It's one of the most famous cities in the world.

Immortalized by writers throughout the years, frozen in amber by film and photography, the picturesque survivor of a wild history whose centuries encompass splendor, decay, pestilence, beauty, and never-ending wonders. A city built on water, whose geographical position once almost saw it rule the world and form a vital crossing point between West and East. A city of merchants, artists, glamour, abject poverty, philosophers, corrupt nobles, refugees, courtesans, and unforgettable lovers, buffeted by the tides of wars, a unique place whose architecture is a subtle palette reflecting the successive waves of settlers, invaders, religions, and short-term rulers.

Venice is ever present in the popular imagination, and there is no denying its incomparable visual beauty. The flow of the Grand Canal and its cortege of palazzi, the famous bridges, the thousand and one churches, Piazza San Marco and its pigeons (and annual floods), the glassblowers of Murano, the Doge's Palace, the calm waters of its lagoon, the 117 neighboring islands so full of dark history and legend, the gondolas, carnival time, the markets overflowing with food, fish, jewellery, and trinkets—all images that evoke the beauty and strangeness of Venice in everyone's mind, whether you have been there or not.

They call her La Serenissima, La Dominante, the Queen of the Adriatic, the City of Water, the Floating City, and the City of Canals.

Venice has always been a magnet for writers, and the pilgrimage there has become a necessary rite of passage. An endless list would include, in no particular order of importance or chronological order (somehow chronology is of no importance when it comes to Venice; it is a city to a certain extent frozen in time, poised on a knife edge between the past and the future, where decay is an integral part of the surrounding atmosphere): Thomas Mann, Lord Byron, Daphne du Maurier, D.H. Lawrence, Jan Morris, Patricia Highsmith, Kazuo Ishiguro, Henry James, Goethe, George Sand, Robert Browning, Goldoni, Ruskin, Evelyn Waugh, Mark Twain, Shakespeare, John Berendt, Donna Leon, Tiziano Scarpa, Marcel Proust, Michael Dibdin, Dickens, Joseph Brodsky, Hemingway, Philippe Sollers, Sarah Dunant, Ezra Pound, and possibly the best-known Venetian author of them all, Giacomo Casanova, the great seductor and the epitome of Venice's edgy blend of sensuality and morbidity. And don't get me started on all the filmmakers who've attempted to catch the true essence of Venice on celluloid, while dodging the clichés and the tourist throngs ...

Whether they have lived there at some time or not, all these authors have written about Venice and its fascinating atmosphere, its smells and colors, its people and visitors, in a myriad of different ways. So why yet another book about Venice? As Erica Jong puts it, "Was it Henry James or Mary McCarthy who said, 'There is nothing new to say about Venice'?"

Unlike any other place, the new Venice is also the old Venice, and change in this most curious of cities is something almost imperceptible and invisible to the naked eye. Walking just a few minutes away from the Rialto Bridge, for instance, and losing yourself in backstreets, where the canals and small connecting bridges leave just enough space to pass along the buildings without falling into the water, it's as if you are stepping into a past century altogether, with no indication whatsoever of modernity. You wade through a labyrinth of stone, water, and wrought-iron bridges, and after dark feel part of another world where electricity isn't yet invented, a most unsettling feeling nothing can prepare you for.

In a city overcome by tourists, that would not be able to make a living without them, the ambiguous relationship between visitors and residents becomes a source of tension and studied hesitancy. Venice today is indeed a city in decline, slowly sinking with no real plans yet settled upon to avert the inevitable further decay, where the population is shrinking year after year, its youth abandoning its shores for lack of opportunities outside of service industries or actual criminality. At its center are the architectural splendors, on its margins the industrial port and factory zones and all their attendant murkiness. A complex but perfect background for the seductions of "noir," and despite the contrast between a rich historical past and the evolving present, as was the case in the volume dedicated to Rome in this same Noir Series, which I edited with Chiara Stangalino, a fresh canvas for writers to conjugate new waltzes in darkness, balancing the old, the new, and the in-between, the undeniable beauty of the surrounding landscape and the rotten core on the inside that of course never features on all the picture postcards of Venice most of us blissfully ignore to our peril.

I've always felt that Venice belongs to the world, attracting us from all over in its spiderweb of beauty, crumbling stones, and water, so this time around I didn't just invite Italian writers to let their imaginations loose on the city, and summoned the mischievous and noir imaginations of writers hailing from the UK, the USA, Canada, France, and Australia too. The portrait they draw in Venice Noir is compelling, as hapless visitors and troubled locals wander the canals, bridges, and waters of La Serenissima, with a heartful of darkness and wonder, evoking all the secrets, sounds, sights, and smells of the city. And there's not even a gondola in every story! Which goes to show that in any noir city, you should expect the unexpected.

Maxim Jakubowski February 2012

(Continues...)

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Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Akashic Books,U.S.
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1617750735
• ISBN 13: 9781617750731
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Sprache: Englisch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Herausgeber: Jakubowski Maxim
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar