Toulouse Noir

BRAND-NEW STORIES BY: Al Baylac, Maïté Bernard, Tanella Boni, Manu Causse, Gaspard Chauvelot, Pascal Dessaint, Francis Émourgeon, Sarah Grall, Adeline Grand-Clément, Nicolas Rouillé, Hafid Saïdi, and Benoît Séverac. All stories translated from French by David and Nicole Ball. From the Introduction by Charles-Henri Lavielle: "In crime novels and in many other types of fiction, I have often been struck by a troubled feeling, as if the stories could not exist outside of their specific locations; that the writing provides a way for the reader to physically feel a place. For me, selfishly, this was probably the main reason I agreed to edit this collection of short stories . . . There are a few other circumstances that might justify my place in this adventure. I've lived in Toulouse for more than thirty-five years. I went to the university here, I've walked around its streets at night, have gone to bars, nightclubs, and concert halls . . ."If the stories in the Akashic Books Noir Series are rooted in cities--Toulouse in this case--even reduced to their specificity, they also speak to our common humanity. "Nothing human is foreign to me," Alban Bensa said repeatedly. And that's probably enough of a reason to read this collection, even if you never set foot here."