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Orange County Noir

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Orange County, California, brings to mind the endless summer of sand and surf, McMansion housing tracts, a conservative stronghold, and tony shopping centers. It's a place where pilates classes are run like boot camps, real estate values are discussed at your weekly colonic, and ice cream parlors on Main Street, USA, exist side-by-side with pho shops and taquerias. Orange County Noir pulls back the veil to reveal what lurks behind the curtain.

Features brand-new stories Gordon McAlpine, Susan Straight, Robert S. Levinson, Rob Roberge, Nathan Walpow, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, Dan Duling, Mary Castillo, Lawrence Maddox, Dick Lochte, Robert Ward, Gary Phillips, Martin J. Smith, and Patricia McFall.

Editor Gary Phillips is the author of many novels and short stories. He lives in Southern California.

309 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2010

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About the author

Gary Phillips

178 books194 followers
GARY PHILLIPS has been a community activist, labor organizer and delivered dog cages. He’s published various novels, comics, short stories and edited several anthologies including South Central Noir and the Anthony award-winning The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir. Violent Spring, first published in 1994 was named in 2020 one of the essential crime novels of Los Angeles. He was also a writer/co-producer on FX’s Snowfall (streaming on Hulu), about crack and the CIA in 1980s South Central where he grew up. Recent novels include One-Shot Harry and Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem. He lives with his family in the wilds of Los Angeles.

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
Profile Image for Joe.
515 reviews978 followers
June 27, 2021
My introduction to each author featured in this collection is Orange County Noir. Published in 2010, the volume is a part of the Akashic Noir Series that travels from Baltimore Noir to Toronto Noir and dozens of cities in between. I was a little dubious that anything deadly or seductive could materialize in the shadow of Disneyland, South Coast Plaza or sushi joints, but attending a panel on art of the short story at the L.A. Times Festival of Books, I was impressed by Susan Straight and interested in authors based in my region. The 2018 midterm elections proved that Orange County is no longer "where the good Republicans go to die" but with a growing Latino and Asian population, growing diverse.

Five-star noir:

***** Susan Straight, Bee Canyon. In which California Highway Patrol officer Jerry Frias recounts his encounters with "the phantom," a homeless Vietnam vet who in 1977 terrorizes motorists along the Riverside Freeway in the Santa Ana Narrows by chucking rocks at their windshields. Jerry is his latest victim and joins a manhunt for the man, wary the phantom might identify Jerry for shooting and burying a redneck the officer encountered in Bee Canyon while off-duty. This is more "literary fiction" and less "thriller" but I loved the dreamlike nature of Straight's storytelling and choice of the Santa Ana Narrows for her setting when the area was still agricultural.

The words were still in my head when I got dressed. The tracker was from Oklahoma, and his voice was country. They'd hired him from the El Cajon Border Patrol and he'd been here off and on since May, when the deputy got stabbed. George and some deputies had been out on a bunch of occasions, sometimes on motorcycles and horseback, and they hadn't seen anything. So they got Kearney.

He didn't say much, but I heard him tell someone, "I plain love putting together a puzzle like that." They'd been looking at maps for weeks. I couldn't tell what he thought when he glanced at me, so I hadn't said anything except that I used to hunt with my father in the canyons.

"What you hunt?"

"Rabbits."

He had a mustache like a black staple turned upside down. A brimmed hat. They called him a sign-cutter and a man-tracker. Some of the other guys in the locker room joked that he was like Disneyland--Daniel Boone or some shit. He'd been working for Border Patrol for seventeen years, tracking Mexicans trying to cross.


***** Nathan Walpow, A Good Day's Work. In which an unnamed narrator who lives in the Leisure World retirement community in Seal Beach develops an unlikely friendship with a fellow "old fart" named Hank, who the narrator knows hides a past in which he was acquitted in the second degree murder of his wife. The narrator and his wife still grieve the loss of their 11-year-old son and when Hank's daughter Rae reveals to the narrator that her father's life is in danger, the narrator gets involved. Walpow's recipe of retirement living, beach community, dangerous right wing politics and blackmail is dashed off with a touch of dark pasts and finishes strong.

***** Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, Crazy For You. In which drama teacher Mimi left her job and husband rather than let a relationship with a teenage student named Levi ruin her. Settling into a crap apartment in Westside Costa Mesa, Mimi is joined by Levi when he turns eighteen and searches the want ads for a job. When he's not boning Mimi on the kitchen floor, Levi works as a handyman and proposes she interview for a nanny job with a rich widower whose home Levi has access to and would like to rob. Mimi starts to see the widower as a better score than her boytoy. Sex, doublecross, murder and Wahoo's Fish Tacos! DeMarco-Barrett's noir story is very well-written and has it all.

We sat across from each other at Wahoo's Fish Tacos, a popular haunt on Placentia, down the street from where we lived. The exterior was covered with chipping teal paint. Surf stickers smattered the windows. The menu offered Mexican entrees that weren't gourmet, but were good enough, priced for artists and people on limited incomes, and for rich Orange Countians who wanted to feel they were getting away with something. As he talked about what we'd do with the money--a new truck for him, a kitchen for me--you'd think I was one hungry fish, the way I went for it. I must have been beyond bored. We'd go slow and easy, figure things out, and when we had all the pieces, we'd make our play, he said. But I had a bad feeling.

***** Robert Ward, Black Star Canyon. In which TV writer-producer Johnny Mavis is fired from his hit show and to go someplace where no one knows his name, posts up at a friend's empty second home in the O.C., Dana Point to be exact. Johnny's plan to smoke a little weed, play some pickup basketball and maybe chase blonde surfer girls gets complicated when he befriends two house painters and their girlfriend. I really value a writer who can lock his subject matter expertise into a story and Ward's acumen with the TV industry + pickup basketball + remote Santa Ana Canyons come together in blood curdling and psychologically compelling way.

***/ ** The rest of the fourteen stories, many which follow convention too closely for my taste, rate an okay. The best of those are The Performer by Gary Phillips in which a piano player in Los Alamitos is seduced by a young Army widow into ripping off her employer and On the Night In Question by Patricia McFall, in which an income tax preparer in West Garden Grove romances a convicted felon via InmatePlaymate.com who gets more than she bargained for with her patsy. Disneyland® is not mentioned by name but plays a role in The Happiest Place by Gordon McAlpine, though any conversation I've had with any park employee would've made wilder and crazier fiction.

Orange County Noir introduced me to some terrific local writers and inspired me to sketch out my own Orange County Noir story, set in Irvine, the safest large city in the United States which isn't represented here (San Juan Capistrano, Tustin, Laguna Beach, Santa Ana, Orange, Laguna Niguel and Balboa Island round out the tour).

Profile Image for Harris.
1,080 reviews31 followers
June 17, 2016
I traveled to Orange County, California, with my sweetheart a few months ago, visiting her family and her hometown. I’d never been to Southern California so I was intrigued about exploring this strange, new culture! When I saw that a volume of the Akashic Noir anthologies was devoted to this strange and fascinating place, I was eager to check it out and return to the sunny coast.

I find Noir to be one of the most flexible and intriguing genres, often indefinable and yet full of style, offering room for multiple interpretations and differing takes on venerable suspense and crime fiction tropes, taking on gritty realism, humor, and just plain weirdness. The Akashic Noir series has been an interesting take on the genre, filtering these sordid tales of crime, passion, and greed through the cultural lens of various world cities. This one was, unfortunately, among the most disappointing entries in the series I’ve read so far.

Consisting of 13 short stories set in the contemporary communities across Orange County written by various writers from the region, the collection touted the contradictions of these tales of the dark underbelly of a region known for sun, surf, and suburban conformity, but sadly seemed rarely to really dive into these paradoxes. The great majority of the stories seemed plagued by rote stereotypes and boring, predictable tropes; you know, pointless double-crosses, down on their luck men, and lots and lots of women being murdered. The callous murder of women seemed to be the major theme across a majority of the stories, which became more than a little tiresome. Also, little local color seems to be maintained either, in spite of their name dropping local roads and neighborhoods.

Only a few stories in the collection seemed both to tell an engaging, original story and take advantage of the unique setting of Orange County, specifically Bee Canyon by Susan Straight set in the Santa Ana Narrows, Diverters by Rob Roberge set in Tustin, and Dark Matter by Martin J. Smith set on Balboa Island. This trio told fresh, interesting stories rooted in their perspective places, while the rest felt like they could have taken place anywhere, and ranged from okay to downright awful (ugh, Down in Capistrano and Old, Cold Hand in particular, with their retrograde racism and sexism).
Profile Image for Dave.
3,206 reviews379 followers
June 26, 2017
Akashic Noir has published a series of "noir" anthologies. Each anthology is named for a geographical place and contains short fiction centering around that geographic location. This one centers on Orange County California and anyone familiar with the locations can certainly recognize them from these tales. Although I wouldn't necessarily classify all of these stories as noir or even neo-noir, I found them all to be highly readable and entertaining. Stories range from tales about the ghosts that haunt Santa Ana's canyons to the brilliant tale about Diverters in Tustin. Diverters are medical professionals who "divert" drugs from patients to those who pay big bucks for a not so cheap thrill. Hospice workers clearly have the best stuff. There is also a great tale about a movie producer who takes a break in Dana Point and almost misjudges the conniving nature of the locals. Also noteworthy is a tale about "The Happiest Place On Earth" which isn't an absolutely happy tale and reminds you to follow your intuition about who to trust. "On a The Night In Question" by Patricia McFall is also worth a read. It's a yarn about a lonely Garden Grove man and his sweet pen pal in the women's penitentiary. The moods in all these stories capture a certain angst beneath the surface of the endless beaches and housing tracts of some parts of the OC and the sense of unfairness felt by the havenots in various parts of the county not glamorized on tv shows.
Profile Image for Joy.
1,398 reviews
March 6, 2019
This was so bad, I’m kind of embarrassed I read it. This is the 3rd book from this series that I’ve read, and it was shockingly “trashier” than the prior two (Boston, Philadelphia). It was just trashy and of poor taste throughout. Some of the stories I ended up skimming the second half of, just to get through. This book frankly makes me wonder about authors from southern CA...
Profile Image for Marialacey4.
32 reviews1 follower
Read
December 6, 2023
I love reading these short stories and recognizing the towns from OC where I live.
Profile Image for Ryan Mishap.
3,466 reviews66 followers
November 9, 2020
I actively hate this. Crap stories about crap people with no craft, no human insight, and hardly any mystery or worthwhile plotting. Sadly, the best story I read was Susan Straight's and she just continued her appropriating ways thru 2010 at least.

Avoid.
Profile Image for Robert Morgan Fisher.
584 reviews16 followers
February 6, 2022
Expertly edited by Gary Phillips and includes some amazing genre fiction from Dick Lochte, Patricia McFall and Robert Ward as well as Phillips himself.
Profile Image for Stephen.
377 reviews
October 6, 2022
Great if you love noir/crime short stories. Some are super-compelling, some are boring as hell.
313 reviews
April 7, 2023
It was a good collection of dark short stories set in Orange County. Some of the editing was bad but other than that enjoyable.
Profile Image for Kelly  B.
29 reviews
July 24, 2023
Excellent Writing!

Read this. Every story is tight, well crafted narrative and captures the lifetstyle that is the OC. A fun, not quite true crime read.
Profile Image for Avid Series Reader.
1,390 reviews1 follower
April 15, 2016
Orange County Noir is a collection of hard-boiled short stories set in contemporary Orange County, all by Southern California authors. The foreword by T. Jefferson Parker is a nostalgic look back to the days when orange groves dominated the county.

Stories read in random order, as part of the 2014 Deal Me In! Short Story Reading Challenge (bibliophilica.wordpress.com/deal-me-i...).

Part 1: Only the Lonely

Bee Canyon by Susan Straight is set in the Santa Ana Narrows. A CHP officer recalls an incident from his early days on the force in 1977, when a prankster called The Phantom roamed the freeways, randomly throwing rocks at cars to break windshields.

Down in Capistrano by Robert S. Levinson is set in San Juan Capistrano. A crooked judge makes a secret deal with a convict. A tale of unsurprising plot twists and double-crosses.

Diverters by Rob Roberge is set in Tustin. A 'diverter' is someone who steals pain-killers from terminal patients. The story describes a drug addict's withdrawal symptoms in detail while he's en route to steal from a terminal patient. At the home of the dying man, a fracas ensues when another diverter tries to stop them.

A Good Day's Work by Nathan Walpow is set in Seal Beach. Two "old codgers" take a walk from their homes in Leisure World onto the pier. They see a teenager being bullied, and one of the old men intervenes, motivated by a tragedy in his life. Afterward the two men share their past stories, and Hank reveals anxiety for his safety. When Hank gets killed, his surviving friend achieves a clever justice. Surprising and satisfying plot.

Part 2: Every Move You Make

Crazy for You by Barbara DeMarco-Barrett is set in Costa Mesa.

The Toll by Dan Duling is set in Laguna Beach.

2:45 Out of Santa Ana by Mary Castillo is set in Santa Ana.

Old, Cold Hand by Lawrence Maddox is set in the City of Orange. A game of deadly tricks, bluffs and double-crosses. A tenured professor pressures a wanna-be-tenured professor to participate in a crime. It’s quite a trap – but then a hardened criminal who has been interviewed and sort of befriended by the new professor plays a part. Plot twists keep you guessing.

The Movie Game by Dick Lochte is set in Laguna Niguel. A taxi driver picks up a fare who turns out to be a hit woman trying to run off with a gangster’s money.

Part 3: The Lush Life

Black Star Canyon by Robert Ward is set in Dana Point. A Hollywood screenwriter kicked off his show goes to a friend’s house in Dana Point to relax and refresh his creativity. He plays basketball and halfway makes friends with people he considers “working class”. Things go tragically wrong.

The Performer by Gary Phillips is set in Los Alamitos.

The Happiest Place by Gordon McAlpine is set in Anaheim.

Dark Matter by Martin J. Smith is set on Balboa Island. A has-been rock star meets a gruesome end in his Balboa Island home.

On the Night in Question by Patricia McFall is set in Garden Grove.
Profile Image for D.W. Miller.
17 reviews7 followers
September 18, 2010
I read this book as research for a short story I was asked to write for a similar anthology. I was hoping to come away with some different ideas of what Noir fiction is, what it can do, and what the genre encompasses; however, I was sorely dissapointed.

Every story in Orange County Noir deals with murder in one form or another. The motivations for murder vary story to story, of course, but generally stick close to age-old stereotypes and plot devices. For the most part, I'd say the stories in this anthology are contrived and predictable. I wasn't suprised, or particularly impressed, by any one of them, and I didn't come away with any fresh perspectives on Noir Fiction as a genre. In fact, I would say that reading this book was detrimental to my research.

If this is the extent of what Noir Fiction can do and be, then I have no desire to have my writing be a part of that genre.
Profile Image for Tuxlie.
150 reviews5 followers
Want to read
July 29, 2015

Orange County, California, brings to mind the endless summer of sand and surf, McMansion housing tracts, a conservative stronghold, and tony shopping centers. It's a place where pilates classes are run like boot camps, real estate values are discussed at your weekly colonic, and ice cream parlors on Main Street, USA, exist side-by-side with pho shops and taquerias. Orange County Noir pulls back the veil to reveal what lurks behind the curtain.

Features brand-new stories by: Susan Straight, Robert S. Levinson, Rob Roberge, Nathan Walpow, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, Dan Duling, Mary Castillo, Lawrence Maddox, Dick Lochte, Robert Ward, Gary Phillips, Gordon McAlpine, Martin J. Smith, and Patricia McFall.

Profile Image for Jesse Easley.
43 reviews
February 9, 2015
Noir in LA LA Land? What's not to love?!
I wonder if they picked the stories or if they picked the authors and challenged them with the theme.
Either or Orange County Noir is a great collection of shorts from a wide group of authors.

It's a good flip of the script to read the Noir Subject Matter in a landscape we don't often associate with it. Perhaps even antipodes to it.
The book is broken into stories set in the different cities of Orange County so you get a good imprint of the city as well as the story taking place with in it. Some are better than others, but all of them have sinister entertaining aspects.

I know the publishers started with Brooklyn Noir, but I should see how many other locations they have published.
I'd love to read some Alaskan Noir!!
12 reviews3 followers
June 30, 2014
These stories were entertaining and imaginative. Some of the writing was pretty bad and read like map quest directions on how to get around the neighborhood in question. My favorite was the story about Disneyland. The juxtaposition of the Happiest place on earth and the security detail after the age of terror was really fun. The ending wasn't good, though. The collection didn't include the Asian communities and hooked a little too much into the LA show business themes (although I liked most of those stories).
Profile Image for Chris.
1,617 reviews30 followers
July 27, 2011
Another great collection of short stories set in the OC. Lots of "you can see where they are going and then they twist" type plots. One memorable line in here is "Orange County, where Republicans go to die." We meet college professors, druggies, over the hill celebrities, trophy wives, taxi drivers,and even Disneyland security guards all twisting each other in these noir shorts.
Profile Image for Kristan.
203 reviews
June 22, 2012
I was right to not have high expectations for this book. Some of the stories are ok but the only thing I actually enjoyed about this book was reading the descriptions of the various Orange County cities. Having lived in the OC for a few years, I recognized many of the locations. All in all, the book was quite unmemorable.
Profile Image for miteypen.
834 reviews65 followers
May 15, 2015
About what you'd expect for noir: mostly down and dirty, murder and double-crosses. Each story is set in a different locale in Orange County, and if you're familiar with OC you'll probably get more out of it than someone who isn't. All the stories are short and you can get through the book quickly, making it perfect for leisure reading.
276 reviews
March 7, 2016
Orange County Noir is a collection of 14 short stories all taking place within the geographical area of Orange County California. The stories all contain some disturbing edgy plots of murder and mayhem. What was great was that many collections of short stories have a few duds, but I loved all these stories.
Profile Image for Mary.
Author 13 books120 followers
May 31, 2010
Catching up on all the fabulous stories by my fellow contributors. It's chock full of femme fatales, sad sacks, villains and heroes.
11 reviews
December 10, 2010
I don't normally go for short stories, but this one was fun because each story really encapsulated the town it took place in.
Profile Image for Leenda dela Luna.
98 reviews5 followers
June 2, 2013
I really enjoyed this collection. Several of the stories do NOT end with death, which made them a nice surprise. I thought the Santa Ana story was the best of the collection.
Profile Image for Bob.
254 reviews
March 27, 2014
Except for the typical shortcomings of short stories, this was a good collection
Profile Image for Edward Smith.
913 reviews12 followers
April 18, 2017
I was pleasantly surprised by this edition of the series...Orange County! What could one possibly write about Orange County that was of any interest.

It was an excellent read with lots of betrayals and storylines that can only happen in California.

I would recommend this book and this series to any Mystery/ Thriller buffs.
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