Down These Mean StreetsEdited by
Larry Correia & Kacey Ezell
(Baen, January 2024, 378 pp., kindle, audiobook, hc)
“Ophir Chasma” by Kacey Ezell
“Yokoburi” by Hinkley Correia
“Empire of Splinters” by Mike Massa
“The Streets of CircumFrisco” by Robert B. Hampson
“He Who Dies With the Most Scars” by Patrick M. Tracy
“Fool’s Gold” by Dan Willis
“Central After Dark” by Casey Moores
“Ghosts of Kaskata” by Marisa Wolf
“A Devil’s Bargain” by Steve Diamond
“Urban Renewal” by Chris Kennedy
“1957–The Dark Side of Paradise” by Robert Buettner
“Breathe” by Griffin Barber
“It’s Always Sunny in Key West” by Laurell K. Hamilton
“Low Mountain” by Larry Correia
Reviewed by C. D. Lewis
The editors of Down These Mean Streets set out to collect stories that are not only noir, but which showcase their locale. The volume offers fourteen new short stories. They include science fiction set on Mars, an urban fantasy set in Key West, alternate history in New York—an enormous diversity of locales capable of supporting noir. Down These Mean Streets exceeds the reviewer’s one-third-winners threshold for recommendation with nearly half the pieces recommended.
Kacey Ezell‘s 11,900-word “Ophir Chasma” sets a futuristic detective noir tale in the deepest canyon known in the solar system, the one on Mars from which the story takes its name. Ezell infuses “Ophir Chasma” from the start with elements that establish a dark, unsentimental, offworld future. First-person voice evokes a black-and-white noirish voiceover complete with unnecessary adjectives and personal opinion grounded in offscreen experience. The killer’s victims, methods, and protection by authorities evoke the lore surrounding the Whitechapel murders that made Jack the Ripper famous. May appeal particularly to those who like tales in which Jack the Ripper is caught and fans of dismal futures.
Hinkley Correia sets the 9,000-word “Yokoburi” in an urban-fantasy Tokyo. While her parents are out of town, the US-born daughter of paranormal private investigators takes a missing persons case local supernaturals can’t take to human police. “Yokoburi” gives the vibe of an investigation into the seedy world of big-city rival gangs, but the gangsters are magical Japanese monsters and wizards and the investigator is a certified exorcist with an enchanted automatic. Think: teen Constantine on the streets of Tokyo.
Opening in Brooklyn in the wake of the German-American Bund’s pro-Nazi demonstration in 1939, “Empire of Splinters” is Mike Massa‘s 15,000-word urban fantasy alternate history set in the world of The Genius War. The counter-espionage tale includes backstory and details likely to appeal to fans of military fantasy. Readers new to Massa’s The Genius War can expect to spend time getting up to speed on the world’s vocabulary and its supernatural beings. Based on the old idea of a genius loci, or local spirit, The Genius War features agents of powerful regional spirits pursuing their masters’ interests outside their own territories. In “Empire of Splinters” agents of powers in France and England investigate meddling in the United States by agents of powers that dwell in cities controlled by Nazis. Although related in close third person voice, “Empire of Splinters” gives opinions one might expect in a first-person noir voiceover (complete with repeated use of the word “dame” and colorful hyperbole), but delivers these comments in the third person rather than in the voice of a character. A slow start is offset by a climax spiced with action and betrayal and double-crosses suited to a spy story, and a conclusion well-suited to an urban fantasy secret history.
Robert E. Hampson‘s 9400-word comic science fiction detective noir “The Streets of CircumFrisco” is set on Frisco Station. The narrator’s language to describe technological issues tease a fantasy setting, but these seem to suggest entertaining slang for future troubleshooting approaches rather than fantasy content. Although the story plays with genre stereotypes for laughs, and the private detective protagonist’s familiarity with the tropes of noir detectives and lines from space thrillers keeps a light mood, the reader’s attention is directed more at the mystery than the genre. Humor maintains interest while the protagonist unravels the mystery under the influence of a field that causes people to play into noir tropes. Those who love puns will enjoy the villain’s clues.
At nearly 8800 words, Patrick M. Tracy‘s high-fantasy dark comic noir “He Who Dies with the Most Scars” is among the shorter works in Mean Streets and gives good laughs for its length. It features, for example, a necromancer pasty chef beset by assassins. Good banter, multiple intersecting conflicts, and colorful magic.
Dan Willis sets “Fool’s Gold” in Harlem in an urban-fantasy 1931, where a runewrite private detective is pressed by multiple parties to solve the same murder. It’s noir set in the ’30s, so it’s a struggle to get out alive. An office too new for customers to find, a hostile police detective, a dangerous dame, a crooked businessman, a murder over a crime business, and no payday. The vibe is solid noir, the magic has great flavor (causing more trouble than it prevents, but factoring suitably in the climax), and the disasters keep coming. Well done.
Casey Moores‘ comic horror urban fantasy mystery “Central After Dark” quickly strands its protagonist broke and without a phone in Albuquerque near the intersection of Central and Interstate 40. “Central After Dark” doesn’t proceed like a detective story, with investigation and an apparent adversary, but observes the narrator’s trek along Central toward friends who might be able to provide him a phone or someplace to sleep. “Central After Dark” delivers hope and dashed dreams while a largely clueless protagonist enjoys Albuquerque nightlife while being hunted by supernatural predators.
Marisa Wolf opens the grim future detective story “Ghosts of Kaskata” with narration sure to please fans of noir. A grizzled war veteran works, grudgingly and from a sense of duty, with old adversaries to solve a murder committed on the victory anniversary while the protagonist’s city is filled with tourists, crowded streets, and patriotic songs from her service years repurposed as corporate jingles. Since the climax turns on employment of technology and superior information to outthink an enemy in a life-or-death confrontation, this is genuine science fiction and not some other genre performed on a set decorated with SF wallpaper. “Ghosts of Kaskata” is a science fiction noir detective story done right.
Steve Diamond‘s urban fantasy short story “A Devil’s Bargain” combines a series of classic detective story elements to deliver a climax aimed to please fans of Dirty Harry. Who doesn’t like seeing a detective who is off duty following an officer-involved shooting roped into investigating a missing person and cornered where another round of officer-involved-shooting paperwork becomes inevitable? This noir is dark to the point that instead of a police procedural it feels more like a revenge plot.
Chris Kennedy‘s science fiction “Urban Renewal” combines ideas from heist and one-last-job stories to depict a once-scapegoated government agent pressured into taking an unreasonably dangerous job to save humanity. Aliens, criminal syndicates, doomsday weapons, bribery, deception, and other goodness color a tale of two frenemies against an alien underworld. Action, humor, and high-tech shenanigans make for a fun ride.
Robert Buettner sets “1957–The Dark Side of Paradise” in an alternate Earth in which the United States never entered World War II and the Cold War was maintained not against a Soviet threat but the Greater Third Reich. Several vignettes paint a portrait of Americans’ experience with the Cold War, and the misadventures caused by relations between government agencies and the people on whom they depend. While the characters and their fates feel well suited to supporting a military thriller, the whole gives the impression it wants the rest of a novel to give the parts purpose. The author has more works out or forthcoming in the same alternate-history universe, and this work may add depth or color to those for readers with access to those works.
“Breathe” is Griffin Barber‘s dark fantasy about a soul-eating wizard who tangles with an existing local menace in a town that not only knows about such perils but has guards actively hunting for them from page one. Accordingly “Breathe” places the narrator in a high stakes contest, on the one hand seeking to eliminate her competition and on the other hand to avoid being executed for her own sorcerous crime. One naturally expects action but the management of anticipation to create suspense not only about the outcome of physical conflicts but also the choices of the narrator herself proves a particular strength. Recommended.
Set in the world of the necromancer/vampire hunter Anita Blake, Laurell K. Hamilton‘s urban fantasy “It’s Always Sunny in Key West” is both a missing person’s case and a vampire’s coming of age story. While the Anita Blake books are narrated by a human vampire hunter, “Always Sunny” is narrated by the vampire Sunny who’s lived in hiding with his vampiric cohort since the violent death of the master vampires who’d formerly enslaved them: it’s a dangerous world for vampires, and without strength one resorts to trickery. Sunny seems well-suited to the happy party atmosphere of Key West and its spring break partygoers, and his post-Me-Too-movement sensibilities set him and his compatriots apart from the dark vampire cabals who threaten the protagonist in Hamilton’s early novels. In a happy ending that casts some Alfred Hitchcock darkness on the antagonist’s demise in a climactic revenge/rescue scene, Hamilton gives hope to the happy vampires who offer thrills to Key West vacationers. Recommended especially for Hamilton fans who want to know more about the ascension of a master vampire, who will enjoy the tale’s addition to the worldbuilding of the Anita Blake universe.
Larry Correia‘s science fiction entry “Low Mountain” may be set amidst cities situated on an alien mountain range, but it acts in many ways like a locked-(virtual)-room murder mystery involving a handful of artificially intelligent systems who administer various aspects of an isolated human colony. The depiction of AIs discussing the crime and trading accusations is itself quality SF humor. There’s investigation, bargains, reprisals, action, and some tantalizingly dark suggestions about motive. The climax is an entertaining twist on a courtroom confession. A good ride and a happy ending.