Singapore Noir

by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

  S.J. Rozan is the Edgar Award–winning author of fourteen novels and three dozen short stories. She’s also half of the thriller-writing team of Sam Cabot. She lives in New York City but travels widely and her goal is to write at least one story set in each place she’s touched down. She loves Singapore, especially for its food.

  Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan is the New York–based author of A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family. A native of Singapore, she is working on her second book, a novel. A former staff writer at the Wall Street Journal, her work has also appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post, among other publications. She has been an artist in residence at Yaddo and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program.

  Donald Tee Quee Ho (a.k.a. Simon Tay) is a writer who occupies roles in politics and academia. He has published five books of creative writing. His novel City of Small Blessings won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2010; Stand Alone (1991) was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. He has been an International Writing Fellow at University of Iowa. One international magazine called him “Singapore’s answer to Haruki Murakami.”

  Nury Vittachi is the author of more than three dozen books, spent part of his childhood in Singapore, and visits regularly from his current home in Hong Kong. He is the founding editor of the region’s top literary journal, the Asia Literary Review, and chairman of Asia Pacific Writers, the region’s largest author association. His works have been released by major publishers in Asia, the US, the UK, Europe, and Australia.

  Ovidia Yu has written over thirty plays, novels, and short stories. Her latest book is Aunty Lee’s Delights, a mystery set in Singapore where she lives with two dogs, two turtles, a tank full of fish, and too many plants. She is a Fulbright alumnus of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, recipient of the Young Artist Award for Literature, the Singapore Youth Award, and an Edinburgh Fringe First Award.

  Please enjoy this excerpt from

  USA Noir: Best of the Akashic Noir Series

  Edited by Johnny Temple

  INTRODUCTION

  WRITERS ON THE RUN

  In my early years as a book publisher, I got a call one Saturday from one of our authors asking me to drop by his place for “a smoke.” I politely declined as I had a full day planned. “But Johnny,” the author persisted, “I have some really good smoke.” My curiosity piqued, I swung by, but was a bit perplexed to be greeted with suspicion at the author’s door by an unhinged whore and her near-nude john. The author rumbled over and ushered me in, promptly sitting me down on a smelly couch and assuring the others I wasn’t a problem. Moments later, the john produced a crack pipe to resume the party I had evidently interrupted. This wasn’t quite the smoke I’d envisaged, so I gracefully excused myself after a few (sober) minutes. I scurried home pondering the author’s notion that it was somehow appropriate to invite his publisher to a crack party.

  It may not have been appropriate, but it sure was noir.

  From the start, the heart and soul of Akashic Books has been dark, provocative, well-crafted tales from the disenfranchised. I learned early on that writings from outside the mainstream almost necessarily coincide with a mood and spirit of noir, and are composed by authors whose life circumstances often place them in environs vulnerable to crime.

  My own interest in noir fiction grew from my early exposure to urban crime, which I absorbed from various perspectives. I was born and raised in Washington, DC, and have lived in Brooklyn since 1990. In the 1970s and ’80s, when violent, drug-fueled crime in DC was rampant, my mother hung out with cops she’d befriended through her work as a nearly unbeatable public defender. She also grew close to some of her clients, most notably legendary DC bank robber Lester “LT” Irby (a contributor to DC Noir), who has been one of my closest friends since I was fifteen, though he was incarcerated from the early 1970s until just recently. Complicating my family’s relationship with the criminal justice system, my dad sued the police stridently in his work as legal director of DC’s American Civil Liberties Union.

  Both of my parents worked overtime. By the time my sister Kathy was nine and I was seven, we were latchkey kids prone to roam, explore, and occasionally break laws. Though an arrest for shoplifting helped curb my delinquent tendencies, the interest in crime remained. After college I worked with adolescents and completed a master’s degree in social work; my focus was on teen delinquency.

  Throughout the 1990s, my relationship with the urban underbelly expanded as I spent a great deal of time in dank nightclubs populated by degenerates and outcasts. I played bass guitar in Girls Against Boys, a rock and roll group that toured extensively in the US and Europe. The long hours on the road not spent on stage gave way to book publishing, which began as a hobby in 1996 with my friends Bobby and Mark Sullivan.

  The first book we published was The Fuck-Up, by Arthur Nersesian—a dark, provocative, well-crafted tale from the disenfranchised. A few years later Heart of the Old Country by Tim McLoughlin became one of our early commercial successes. The book was widely praised both for its classic noir voice and its homage to the people of South Brooklyn. While Brooklyn is chock-full of published authors these days, Tim is one of the few who was actually born and bred here. In his five decades, Tim has never left the borough for more than five weeks at a stretch and he knows the place, through and through, better than anyone I’ve met.

  In 2003, inspired by Brooklyn’s unique and glorious mix of cultures, Tim and I set out to explore New York City’s largest borough in book form, in a way that would ring true to local residents. Tim loves his home borough despite its flagrant flaws, and was easily seduced by the concept of working with Akashic to try and portray its full human breadth.

  He first proposed a series of books, each one set in a different neighborhood, whether it be Bay Ridge, Williamsburg, Park Slope, Fort Greene, Bed-Stuy, or Canarsie. It was an exciting idea, but it’s hard enough to publish a single book, let alone commit to a full series. After we considered various other possibilities, Tim came upon the idea of a fiction anthology organized by neighborhood, each one represented by a different author. We were looking for stylistic diversity, so we focused on “noir,” and defined it in the broadest sense: we wanted stories of tragic, soulful struggle against all odds, characters slipping, no redemption in sight.

  Conventional wisdom dictates that literary anthologies don’t sell well, but this idea was too good to resist—it seemed the perfect form for exploring the whole borough, and we got to work soliciting stories. We batted around book titles, including Under the Hood, before settling on Brooklyn Noir. The volume came together beautifully and was a surprise hit for Akashic, quickly selling through multiple printings and winning awards. (See pages 548–550 for a full list of prizes garnered by stories originally published in the Noir Series.)

  Having seen nearly every American city, large and small, through the windows of a van or tour bus, I have developed a deep fondness for their idiosyncrasies. So for me it was easy logic to take the model of Brooklyn Noir—sketching out dark urban corners through neighborhood-based short fiction—and extend it to other cities. Soon came Chicago Noir, San Francisco Noir, and London Noir (our first of many overseas locations). Selecting the right editor to curate each book has been the most important decision we make before assembling it. It’s a welcome challenge because writers are often enamored of their hometowns, and many are seduced by the urban landscape’s rough edges. The generous support of literary superheroes like George Pelecanos, Laura Lippman, Dennis Lehane, and Joyce Carol Oates, all of whom have edited series volumes, has been critical.

  There are now fifty-nine books in the Noir Series. Forty of them are from American locales. As of this writing, a total of 787 authors have contributed 917 stories to the series and helped Akashic to stay afloat during perilous economic times. By publishing six to eight new volumes in the Noir Series every year, we have provided a steady venue for short stories, which have in recent times struggled with diminishing p
opularity. Akashic’s commitment to the short story has been rewarded by the many authors—of both great stature and great obscurity—who have allowed us to publish their work in the series for a nominal fee.

  I am particularly indebted to all sixty-seven editors who have cumulatively upheld a high editorial standard across the series. The series would never have gotten this far without rigorous quality control. There also couldn’t be a Noir Series without my devoted and tireless (if occasionally irreverent) staff led by Johanna Ingalls, Ibrahim Ahmad, and Aaron Petrovich.

  * * *

  This volume serves up a top-shelf selection of stories from the series set in the United States. USA Noir only scratches the surface, however, and every single volume has more gems on offer.

  When I set out to compile USA Noir, I was delighted by the immediate positive responses from nearly every author I contacted. The only author on my initial invitation list who isn’t included here is one I couldn’t track down: the publisher explained to me that the writer was “literally on the run.” While I’m disappointed that we can’t include the story, the circumstance is true to the Noir Series spirit.

  And part of me—the noir part—is expecting a phone call from the writer, inviting me over for a smoke.

  Johnny Temple

  Brooklyn, NY

  July 2013

  End of Excerpt

  ___________________

  More about USA Noir

  The best USA-based stories in the Akashic Noir Series, compiled into one volume and edited by Johnny Temple!

  “All the heavy hitters . . . came out for USA Noir . . . an important anthology of stories shrewdly culled by Johnny Temple.” —New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice

  “Readers will be hard put to find a better collection of short stories in any genre.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “A must read for mystery fans, not just devotees of Akashic’s ‘Noir’ series, this anthology serves as both an introduction for newcomers and a greatest-hits package for regular readers of the series . . . There isn’t a weak story in the collection . . . Strongly recommended for readers who enjoy mysteries published by Hard Case Crime, as well as for fans of police procedurals.” —Library Journal (starred review)

  “The 37 stories in this collection represent the best of the U.S.-based anthologies, and the list of contributors include virtually anyone who’s made the best-seller list with a work of crime fiction in the last decade . . . a must-have anthology.” —Booklist (starred review)

  “It’s hard to imagine how the present anthology could be topped for sheer marquee appeal . . . Perhaps the single most impressive feature of the collection is its range of voices, from Joyce Carol Oates’ faux innocent young family to Megan Abbott’s impressionable high school kids to the chorus of peremptory voices S.J. Rozan plants in a haunted thief’s head. Eat your heart out, Walt Whitman: These are the folks who hear America singing, and moaning and screaming.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “A less enlightened Temple cover collection of crime and mystery stories could easily reduce itself to stereotypical cartoons about white detectives with a whiskey bottle and a gun in the drawer but Akashic’s series takes itself very seriously in its mission to represent all aspects of a city’s dark side.” —Kirkus Reviews, Feature Story/Interview with Johnny Temple

  “For those who prefer their crime closer to home, there is USA Noir, a veritable greatest hits of Akashic’s long-running, acclaimed noir anthology series, rounding up solid gold blackness of the bleakest and darkest kind . . . Like Chuck Berry sang, ‘Anything you want, we got right here in the USA.’” —Mystery Scene Magazine

  Launched with the summer ’04 award-winning best seller Brooklyn Noir, Akashic Books has published over sixty volumes in its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.

  Featuring Noir Series stories from: Dennis Lehane, Don Winslow, Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Susan Straight, Jonathan Safran Foer, Laura Lippman, Pete Hamill, Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Child, T. Jefferson Parker, Lawrence Block, Terrance Hayes, Jerome Charyn, Jeffery Deaver, Maggie Estep, Bayo Ojikutu, Tim McLoughlin, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, Reed Farrel Coleman, Megan Abbott, Elyssa East, James W. Hall, J. Malcolm Garcia, Julie Smith, Joseph Bruchac, Pir Rothenberg, Luis Alberto Urrea, Domenic Stansberry, John O’Brien, S.J. Rozan, Asali Solomon, William Kent Krueger, Tim Broderick, Bharti Kirchner, Karen Karbo, and Lisa Sandlin.

  JOHNNY TEMPLE is the publisher and editor in chief of Akashic Books, an award-winning Brooklyn-based independent company dedicated to publishing urban literary fiction and political nonfiction. Temple won the 2013 Ellery Queen Award; the American Association of Publishers’ 2005 Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing; and the 2010 Jay and Deen Kogan Award for Excellence in Noir Literature. Temple plays bass guitar in the band Girls Against Boys, which has toured extensively across the globe and released numerous albums on independent and major record companies. He has contributed articles and political essays to various publications, including the Nation, Publishers Weekly, AlterNet, Poets & Writers, and BookForum. He is also the chair of the Brooklyn Literary Council, which works with Brooklyn’s borough president to plan the annual Brooklyn Book Festival in September.

  USA Noir is available in paperback from our website and in bookstores everywhere. The e-book edition is available wherever e-books are sold.

  About the Akashic Noir Series

  The Akashic Books Noir series was launched in 2004 with the award-winning anthology, Brooklyn Noir. Each book is comprised of all new stories, each taking place within a distinct location within the city of the book. Stories in the series have won multiple Edgar, Shamus, and Hammett awards and the volumes have been translated into 10 languages. Every book is available on our website, as eBooks from your favorite vendor, and in print at online and brick & mortar bookstores everywhere. For more information on the series, including an up-to-date list of available titles, please visit www.akashicbooks.com/noirseries.htm.

  ALSO AVAILABLE IN THE AKASHIC NOIR SERIES

  BALTIMORE NOIR, edited by LAURA LIPPMAN

  BARCELONA NOIR (SPAIN), edited by ADRIANA V. LÓPEZ & CARMEN OSPINA

  BOSTON NOIR, edited by DENNIS LEHANE

  BOSTON NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by DENNIS LEHANE, JAIME CLARKE & MARY COTTON

  BRONX NOIR, edited by S.J. ROZAN

  BROOKLYN NOIR, edited by TIM MCLOUGHLIN

  BROOKLYN NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by TIM MCLOUGHLIN

  BROOKLYN NOIR 3: NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH, edited by TIM MCLOUGHLIN & THOMAS ADCOCK

  CAPE COD NOIR, edited by DAVID L. ULIN

  CHICAGO NOIR, edited by NEAL POLLACK

  COPENHAGEN NOIR (DENMARK), edited by BO TAO MICHAËLIS

  D.C. NOIR, edited by GEORGE PELECANOS

  D.C. NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by GEORGE PELECANOS

  DELHI NOIR (INDIA), edited by HIRSH SAWHNEY

  DETROIT NOIR, edited by E.J. OLSEN & JOHN C. HOCKING

  DUBLIN NOIR (IRELAND), edited by KEN BRUEN

  HAITI NOIR, edited by EDWIDGE DANTICAT

  HAITI NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by EDWIDGE DANTICAT

  HAVANA NOIR (CUBA), edited by ACHY OBEJAS

  INDIAN COUNTRY NOIR, edited by SARAH CORTEZ & LIZ MARTÍNEZ

  ISTANBUL NOIR (TURKEY), edited by MUSTAFA ZIYALAN & AMY SPANGLER

  KANSAS CITY NOIR, edited by STEVE PAUL

  KINGSTON NOIR (JAMAICA), edited by COLIN CHANNER

  LAS VEGAS NOIR, edited by JARRET KEENE & TODD JAMES PIERCE

  LONDON NOIR (ENGLAND), edited by CATHI UNSWORTH

  LONE STAR NOIR, edited by BOBY BYRD & JOHNNY BYRD

  LONG ISLAND NOIR, edited by KAYLIE JONES

  LOS ANGELES NOIR, edited by DENISE HAMILTON

  LOS ANGELES NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by DENISE HAMILTON

  MANHATTAN NOIR, edited by LAWRENCE BLOCK

&
nbsp; MANHATTAN NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by LAWRENCE BLOCK

  MANILA NOIR, edited by JESSICA HAGEDORN

  MEXICO CITY NOIR (MEXICO), edited by PACO I. TAIBO II

  MIAMI NOIR, edited by LES STANDIFORD

  MOSCOW NOIR (RUSSIA), edited by NATALIA SMIRNOVA & JULIA GOUMEN

  MUMBAI NOIR (INDIA), edited by ALTAF TYREWALA

  NEW JERSEY NOIR, edited by JOYCE CAROL OATES

  NEW ORLEANS NOIR, edited by JULIE SMITH

  ORANGE COUNTY NOIR, edited by GARY PHILLIPS

  PARIS NOIR (FRANCE), edited by AURéLIEN MASSON

  PHILADELPHIA NOIR, edited by CARLIN ROMANO

  PHOENIX NOIR, edited by PATRICK MILLIKIN

  PITTSBURGH NOIR, edited by KATHLEEN GEORGE

  PORTLAND NOIR, edited by KEVIN SAMPSELL

  QUEENS NOIR, edited by ROBERT KNIGHTLY

  RICHMOND NOIR, edited by ANDREW BLOSSOM, BRIAN CASTLEBERRY & TOM DE HAVEN

  ROME NOIR (ITALY), edited by CHIARA STANGALINO & MAXIM JAKUBOWSKI

  SAN DIEGO NOIR, edited by MARYELIZABETH HART

  SAN FRANCISCO NOIR, edited by PETER MARAVELIS

  SAN FRANCISCO NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by PETER MARAVELIS

  SEATTLE NOIR, edited by CURT COLBERT

  SINGAPORE NOIR, edited by CHERYL LU-LIEN TAN

  STATEN ISLAND NOIR, edited by PATRICIA SMITH

  ST. PETERSBURG NOIR, edited by NATALIA SMIRNOVA & JULIA GOUMEN

  TORONTO NOIR (CANADA), edited by JANINE ARMIN & NATHANIEL G. MORE

  TRINIDAD NOIR (TRINIDAD & TOBAGO), edited by LISA ALEN-AGOSTINI & JEANNE MASON

  TWIN CITIES NOIR, edited by JULIE SCHAPER & STEVEN HORWITZ

  USA NOIR: BEST OF THE AKASHIC NOIR SERIES, edited by JOHNNY TEMPLE

  VENICE NOIR (ITALY), edited by MAXIM JAKUBOWSKI

  WALL STREET NOIR, edited by PETER SPIEGELMAN