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A review by colls
Baltimore Noir by
3.0
I wanted to like this more than I actually did. The stories were very uneven and oddly arranged.
While enjoyed her story the most, I find it a little pretentious that the editor put her story first in the anthology. Is that just me? I suppose it's her prerogative. Anyway, he rehab in Locust Point had a very Poe-like feel and the contractor was very well written - especially in such a small number of pages. It had the right dose of creepy.
Dan Fesperman's As Seen on TV is exactly that - a scene from 'The Wire' and had I not watched that show I don't know if I'd give a shit about either the street kids or the cops (renamed in this story, but I want to call them Bubbles & McNulty anyway) or understand how things like the cop's drinking and ex-wife could possible be important to the story about the street kids (it's not - totally unrelated character development in this story but completely ripped from the show)
The one set in Little Italy, Home Movies suffered from too many place name droppings. It's 20 pages long, and stuffed full of landmarks like the Rusty Scupper, the World Trade Center, the Aquarium, etc. Like a dozen at least. The tie-in with the outdoor movies in Little Italy was amusing, but otherwise this felt like something written for an assignment.
The worst was the Frog Cycle. If you read this anthology and you skip this, you're not missing anything.
There are two things that kept this from being a 2-star for me: I read one at a time so I didn't feel like I was reading an anthology and I liked the setting (being from here, I love things set in Baltimore).
While enjoyed her story the most, I find it a little pretentious that the editor put her story first in the anthology. Is that just me? I suppose it's her prerogative. Anyway, he rehab in Locust Point had a very Poe-like feel and the contractor was very well written - especially in such a small number of pages. It had the right dose of creepy.
Dan Fesperman's As Seen on TV is exactly that - a scene from 'The Wire' and had I not watched that show I don't know if I'd give a shit about either the street kids or the cops (renamed in this story, but I want to call them Bubbles & McNulty anyway) or understand how things like the cop's drinking and ex-wife could possible be important to the story about the street kids (it's not - totally unrelated character development in this story but completely ripped from the show)
The one set in Little Italy, Home Movies suffered from too many place name droppings. It's 20 pages long, and stuffed full of landmarks like the Rusty Scupper, the World Trade Center, the Aquarium, etc. Like a dozen at least. The tie-in with the outdoor movies in Little Italy was amusing, but otherwise this felt like something written for an assignment.
The worst was the Frog Cycle. If you read this anthology and you skip this, you're not missing anything.
There are two things that kept this from being a 2-star for me: I read one at a time so I didn't feel like I was reading an anthology and I liked the setting (being from here, I love things set in Baltimore).