Hopeton Hay

In this collection representing Austin, Texas the stories are all noir, but several are elevated noir. A robbery goes wrong, a retired stuntman who owes money has a showdown at a fundraiser for his own medical expenses. A murderous attorney double-crosses her murderous double-crossing mother – and gets double-crossed in return. A teacher dying of leukemia gets involved with a group of teenage credit card skimmers.

There’s of course a lot of crime and murder, but a thread running through show more many of the stories is the massive transformation of Austin and the loss of the city’s identity. “The city used to have some cool. Now, it’s just popular.” show less

I’m always a little heartbroken when an Akashic Noir collection doesn’t work for me. After 3 amazing collections last year, Akashic’s first noir collection of 2023 is a disappointment. There were only three stories I enjoyed: Stunts by Ace Atkins, Reflections by Amanda Moore, and Stitches by Amy Gentry. I loved the main character in Stunts. Moore’s Reflections was delightfully twisty, and Gentry built a complex tale that combined a missing woman, a dead body, mystery, and a sad show more search for answers with a great ending. The rest of this anthology is filled with mediocre writing, boring plots, and terrible endings. Overall, this is a big miss for me and I hope this isn’t a harbinger of what is to come in the rest of this year’s Akashic Noir collections. I really hope it’s just an outlier. show less

Like most of the others I've read from the Akashic Noir series, Austin Noir has some gems and some relative duds. This is probably the series' greatest strength and weakness; there's a little something for everyone, but it's tough to get to 5-star ratings when trying to please as many people as possible.

The ghost of a previous Austin haunts this collection, as the city loses its former character under the weight of constant growth (like so many before it, such as Vegas, Miami, Nashville, show more San Francisco, etc.). To quote a character in Lee Thomas's story, "The city used to have some cool. Now it's just popular." That theme echoes across most of these stories, with varying degrees of resonance.

For my money, standout stories here include "Stunts" by Ace Atkins (an aging stuntman blurs the line between his art and life), "Rush Hour" by Richard Z Santos (where everyone is a victim eventually), the grim "Charles Bronson" by Lee Thomas (no one outruns the sins of their past in this collection), and "Stitches" by Amy Gentry (a meandering whodunit journey through the unreliable characters populating days of college past).

The lows may be forgettable, but the highs in this collection are enjoyable enough to make the effort of finding them worthwhile. show less

If you ever want to get an idea of what life would be like living in Austin Texas, which most people would agree would be very different than living in any other part of Texas, than read these 14 short stories in the latest Akashic Noir series.
As with most sets of short stories, especially by as many different authors as there are stories, you usually will find some that don't quite make the top list. Since this eclectic group of writers are overwhelmingly either Austin natives or show more recent/long term residents they come close to that high bar of excellent writing, an edgily intriguing story and of course, since its noir, at least one death per …...
The stories range from the near down and outers to the fairly affluent and a substantial set of those straddling the permutations in between. You get one quick robbery that melts faster than the current glaciers in the Swiss Alps to a homicide tracing a long term plan of possible patricide vengeance that has the unsatisfying, but not unusual, finale of wealth rules. The usual attributes of greed, revenge, sex, stupidity and violence make their way in one way or another regardless of what section, class or social setting you may find yourself in Austin. A theme that is interlaced throughout most of these stories is the unrelenting social force of gentrification persistently erasing much of the eclectic aspects of Austin life that has made it so unique and thus a magnet for its diverse multicultural populace.
An excellent addition to this excellent Noir series which is now international in scope. show less