REVIEW: Supernatural Noir ed. Ellen Datlow

	Title:	Supernatural Noir
	Editor:	Ellen Datlow
	Pub Date:	June 22nd, 2011
	Chris’ Rating (5 possible):
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First, let me start by saying that I love noir fiction and film. Give me a good hard-boiled detective story, and I’ll lap it up – typically not looking for much beyond entertainment. I also love dark fantasy and horror, and so the thought of blending them in a new anthology fittingly titled Supernatural Noir sounded great to me. Throw in one of the best editors working in the business today – Ellen Datlow – and I am definitely there. Having read a digital review copy, I can say that Dark Horse’s Supernatural Noir delivers as advertised, even if it may lean closer to dark fantasy than I would have liked.

With Datlow’s editorial pedigree, this should come as no surprise. On my shelves at home, I have over fifteen anthologies edited by Datlow (often with excellent collaborators like Terri Windling). I admit, I’m a bit of a fan. Historically, her anthologies have demonstrated a particularly consistent ability to showcase top-flight authors and stories, and to assemble them into collections unified along whatever dimension is relevant to a particular book. The table of contents for Supernatural Noir is no different in this regards.

The authors read like a “who’s who” of dark fantasy (more so than noir): Gregory Frost, Melanie Tem, Paul G. Tremblay, Laird Barron, Jeffrey Ford, Joe R. Lansdale. Sixteen authors contributed original short stories for the anthology, and all of them come from a dark fantasy / supernatural / horror background in their writing. This is not a complaint, but it should be an indicative fact: the authors selected for this book skew by experience towards the “supernatural” part of the anthology’s title, so it should not be surprising that their stories lean in that direction. If you are looking for horror stories written by hard-boiled mystery writers, you won’t find them here. Instead, this collection offers dark fantasists’ spins on the hard-boiled crime story. Which – I would argue – is just as fun, although it means the noir elements might get a little de-emphasized in some places.

A large number of stories (either explicitly or plausibly/implicitly) are set in the time period from the late ’40s to the late ’70s. Considering noir‘s roots in the late ’40’s and ’50’s, this makes sense to me: the square-jawed hero (or stalwart heroine – more on this in a sec) in a worn trenchcoat is emblematic of the post-War period. But the difference in tone between the stories set in this post-War period and the stories set in a contemporary (or vaguely futuristic) setting is striking. The stories set closer to WWII – like Richard Bowes‘ “Mortal Bait”, or Joe R. Lansdale’s “Dead Sister” – tend to employ a greater number of noir tropes. The later a story is set, the less prevalent noir‘s emblematic elements become. What does this say about modern society and the evergreen qualities of noir as a sub-genre? Is noir possible in a world with mobile information and instant access? Judging by the excellent contributions from Melanie Tem (“Little Shit”) and Nick Mamatas (“Dreamer of the Day”), the tropes of traditional noir fiction need to be adjusted and updated to operate in our modern reality: the tropes that worked in the days of vacuum tube televisions may not work any longer.

The second stand-out was the number of female and queer heroes featured. In many ways, this is representative of noir‘s original values: it should be only natural for a genre typified by a frank treatment of violence and sex to grow beyond the “haunted square-jawed hetero male detective” trope. The variety of heroes employed in these stories was encouraging, although at times it stretched some bounds of credulity. For example, while I thought Caitlin R. Kiernan‘s story “The Maltese Unicorn” was great fun, I was haunted by an inability to completely buy its heroine in 1935 New York.

Coming to it looking for fantastical noir, the anthology will be reasonably satisfying. If you come to it looking for noirish dark fantasy, I suspect you will be more satisfied. All of the stories here are competently executed. Some including Jeffrey Ford’s “The Last Triangle” and Elizabeth Bear‘s “The Romance” (which snuck up on me delightfully) will stay with me for a long time. Others, like Laird Barron’s “The Carrion Gods in Their Heaven” just didn’t suit my own tastes, although I recognize their quality. Only two stories (Joe R. Lansdale’s “Dead Sister” and “Mortal Bait”) didn’t work for me for critical reasons: in both cases, they featured characters/voices that did not stand out, and plot structures that I found predictable. Interestingly, both were among the stories that adhered most closely to traditional noir structures. I believe their weaknesses highlight the single greatest challenge in modern noir: crafting a hero and voice that is distinctive and interesting. Most of the stories in this anthology – even those that did not particularly appeal to me – manage to get it right.

If I have one complaint to register, it’s a relatively minor (and inordinately geeky) one. I really enjoyed reading this anthology for its entertainment value. But I would have loved to see one or two critical essays discussing noir and its long relationship with the fantastic (and the Gothic). While I would have loved to see that, I freely admit to being a the kind of dork who likes reading literary analysis.

I recommend Supernatural Noir for fans of hard-boiled detective fiction who want to dabble in the fantastic, or for fans of dark fantasy/horror who want a touch of hard-boiled crime. And that recommendation really says it all: Supernatural Noir delivers as advertised.