Steve Paul

I was disappointed by this book. And most of my sense of disappointment is a consequence of a semantic quibble I have with it:

The title of this anthology is Kansas City Noir. The editor, Steve Paul, explicitly states in his introduction that he left the definition of “noir” wide open when working with the contributing authors, to give them the widest possible latitude for creativity.

I respect that, but the problem is that noir is, in fact, a fairly specific literary style. When I pick up a book that says it’s “noir” it’s because I want to read some noir and I expect it to deliver.

Most of the stories in Kansas City Noir aren’t noir. Which means this book didn’t give me what I expected, or wanted. The book overall left me very disappointed. I imagine many readers, like me, who pick it up expecting noir stories will be equally disappointed.

I think this was a huge editorial misstep. It’s clear to me that, as editor, Mr. Paul failed in his responsibility to provide clear direction to the work.

Thematically, I’m not sure what was going on here, either. Mr. Paul has the book organized into three themed sections; while I see more-or-less how each story fits into the theme of its particular section, I have no sense of how – or if – the themes are supposed to fit together overall. If you got rid of the themes and just had a book of unorganized stories, it would work just as well. I don’t think anything would be lost. These themes do nothing to inform the stories, they add no higher level of meaning or experience to them, or to the book as a whole. They’re completely disposable... which makes them completely pointless.

So those are my issues with the editing of this anthology. What about the stories themselves? (Regardless of whether or not they’re noir...)

As with any such collection, there are a couple stories that are exceptional. Most are good, but not great. To its credit, there are no true duds in this book but I was underwhelmed by the majority of them. The charitable view is to assume that some of these stories aren’t their author’s best efforts. The less charitable view is that some of these authors just aren’t that good. To be honest, I’ve not read enough of their other work to know.

The thing about the stories that bothers me most is that too many of them try way too hard to be profound. They’re uncomfortably self-conscious to make sure that I know how insightful they are.

“Heavy-handed” is the clichéd phrase that pops into my head.

In the final assessment, as a collection of darker stories from local authors, Kansas City Noir is fine. But it’s certainly no better than that and it offers few truly shining moments. It suffers from some significant editorial errors, including false advertising and a lack of strong direction. My lasting impression is that the book is heavy-handed and underwhelming. Neither of which recommend it.… (mere)

I listened to this book at work this summer and also on a road trip. The most compelling thing about this book was that all of the stories were based in or referenced Kansas City, so it was fun to actually picture the locations that were mentioned. Other than that, the stories were less than compelling and many of the characters were pretty unlikable. That being said, while I read mysteries, I'm less familiar with noir as a sub genre and this style may not be my kind of book. (I have picked up a copy of Seattle Noir, and will test this theory at a later date.)
… (mere)