The World is Flat Black

Noir is International, Baby. These Two New Titles Prove It 

By John Hood

Of all the bright ideas in the wild world of dark fiction (and there’ve been quite a few, trust me), one of the brightest has gotta be Akashic Book’s Noir city series. Launched back in ’04 with the belovedly hard-boiled Brooklyn Noir (Akashic, $15.95), the notion is as simple and as elegant as a right fist: nab an editor who’s down with a subject town, as well as its most elemental writers, have those writers kick out a site-specific and suitably streetwise story, compile those tales under one title, and print.

Thus far, the run has taken to the streets of just about every American city worth its weight in shady, from Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, to D.C., Baltimore and Miami, where our own very connected Les Standiford helmed a crime-soaked crop that included James W. Hall and John Dufresne. It’s gone heavy on New York (three Brooklyns, two Manhattans, a Wall Street and a Queens). And it has crossed straits (Havana), seas (Trinidad), and oceans (London, Dublin, Rome).

Now Akashic’s gone even farther, to India, in fact. But not before passing through Turkey. So I figured I’d give you my take on Delhi Noir and one of its more recent international counterparts, Istanbul Noir (both Akashic, $15.95). These are not only two of the keenest collections in the already deeply keen series; each is a dynamite way to see the underside of some very fabled cities.

Delhi Noir might be a tad more exotic, if only for the fact that the teaming metropolis is so plagued by deities. Edited by one Hirsh Sawhney, a new-fangled foreign correspondent type who divides his time between Brooklyn (Akashic’s home base) and Delhi, this swing through the subcontinent’s ancient and mysterious city proves that there’s something deliciously illicit anywhere you go — and it’s best to have the natives tell you all about it.

Take Nalinaksha Bhattacharya’s “Hissing Cobras.” From the time Inspector Bakshi parks his Gypsy next to the “shit yellow” government housing project where he’s set to nose around a pensioner’s “accidental death,” to the time someone goes tumbling down the Malai Mandir temple stairwell, it’s a dank turn of coldly-told lies, uncommon violence, and swarthy subterfuge. Did the old woman really slip on a banana peel and crush her head against a boulder? Or is there more to this sordid story?

There’s more, of course, much more. And it’s spilled with the kinda offhand brilliance common to the Noir series, which seems to be inordinately ordained to offer-up the most wickedly adept storytellers in any city it hits.

“Hissing Cobras” happens to be set in a section of the city called RK Puram, which, according to the ever helpful Wiki, is “a Centre Government Employees residential colony in South Delhi named after the great Sri Ramakrishna.” Built in the ’50s on land stolen from farmers, it’s a world of trudging, drudging babus (office drones), the backwards behenji (a sort of peasant woman) to whom they’re betrothed, and the odd in-law unlucky enough to be stuck overseeing the bare-bones homesteads.

In other words, not a very happy place, for anyone. But still worth a vivid visit. And a ’hood I most likely would never have heard of had Noir not let loose one of its stories. Same goes for the teaming sub city of Rohini (setting of Uday Prakash’s “Walls of Delhi”), the upper crust (and strangely-named) Defence Colony (Palash Krishna Mehrotra’s “Fit of Rage”), the literally hilly Paharganj (Mohan Sikka’s “The Railway Auntie”), or the saintly-branded, posh colony called Nizamuddin West (Ruchir Joshi’s “Parking”).

And that’s another dynamite aspect of Akashic’s killer Noir: not only do you get a fistful of shady tales in every city the series hits, you get takes on just about every neighborhood within (and sometimes without) each city’s limits. In other words you get cunning, and you get clued in.

Same goes for Istanbul Noir, where you get blown along the shore of the Bosporus in the wealthy enclave of Bebek (Feryal Tilmac’s “Hitching in the Lodos”), hustled through the shadowy past in the bustling Aksaray (Mustafa Ziyalan’s “Black Palace”), have your mind read in the “haven for lowlifes” that is Siskinbakkal (Algan Sezginturedi’s “Around Here, Somewhere”) and thrown behind bars in Sagmacilar (Yasemin Aydinoglu’s “One Among Us”). And, yes, that’s the very same prison depicted in Alan Parker’s brutally unsettling Midnight Express.

In Istanbulyou also get one of the tautest tales ever told, in Turkey, or for that matter, anywhere else. And you get it from an American-born teller who’s never once in her life had a problem telling off anybody — including herself.

I speak of “The Spirit of Philosophical Vitriol” by Lydia Lunch. Yep, you heard me correctly, Lydia Fucking Lunch. It’s anybody’s guess how Istanbul editors Mustafa Ziyalan and Amy Spangler got a hold of the outlaw wench, but I’m thrilled that they have. You will be too, once you’ve been smacked down by her incredibly liberating rant. Lunch has long delivered some of most explicitly illicit word work ever to spill from an inkwell. And this time is no different. “Vitriol” will make you mad, and it will make you wanna get even, with everyone. And if that doesn’t spell damn good story to you, well, you need a better alphabet.

So do yourself a favor this summer, pick up a couple of Akashic’s Noir titles and get the fuck outta Dodge. But stay braced. Because once you get back from this kinda traveling, you’ll wish you only had jet lag.