4.6/5 ( )

An anthology of dark-themed stories (as well as a few poems) set in various parts of New Jersey, from the manicured campus of Princeton to the desperate slums of Camden.

This is actually one of a long-running series of "noir" collections set in different cities, states, and regions. I'd previously read USA Noir, a compilation of some of the best stories from the installments set in the United States, and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, so I figured I'd check out one of the others. Sadly, there isn't one for my home state of New Mexico -- which seems like a real oversight! -- so I settled for the New Jersey one, since that's where I spent most of my childhood.

Unsurprisingly, the quality of the stories in this one is a lot more variable than those in the best-of collection. The best of them are very good indeed -- I was particularly impressed by Bradford Morrow's "The Enigma of Grover's Mill" -- while others just kind of left me cold. I'm also left slightly bemused by how many writers seem to have equated "noir" with "characters who smoke immense quantities of pot." ( )

Overall quite unremarkable, with rather disappointing poetry and stories that only achieved importance through an upsettingly humanistic bleakness. Some of the stories held promise - "The Enigma of Grover's Mill", by Bradford Morrow, with an interesting take on insanity and Orson Wells' broadcast of "The War of the Worlds", or Jonathan Safran Foer's "Too Near Real", which contained the brilliant line "We are happy with the fake, and happy with the real, but the near real - the too near real - unnerves us." - but for the most part, none of them lived up to their potential, either feeling stretched thin or merely incomplete.

The sole exception, and indeed the sole reason to read any part of this volume, was the brilliant "New Day Newark" by S.J. Rozan, which features the trope of an awesome little old lady taking matters into her own hands, and using a sharp tongue and clever wit to engineer the fall of two drug gangs who threaten her neighborhood. Incidentally, that's on pages 61-75; go find it in the library, read that story, and put it back on the shelf. ( )