“Off Brattle” by Roland Sharrillo
The orange line. Change to the red line. They’re there. Sitting, standing, giving me the quick, disdain laced glances reserved for work booted laborers with tormented hands. . .
Category: Mondays Are Murder
Mondays Are Murder: Original Noir Fiction to Get Your Week off to a Dark Start
Launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir, our award-winning city-based Noir Series now has over 60 volumes in print, with many more to come. Each volume is overseen by an editor with intimate knowledge of the title city; each story is brand new from a local author, and each is set within a distinct neighborhood or location.
While we’ve been thrilled to publish the original works of over 800 authors in the series, we still long for more. And while we are constantly seeking homegrown editors with native knowledge of national and international cities not yet visited by the series, we’re eager to dig deeper.
Mondays Are Murder allows us to offer a glimpse of cities not yet seen, neighborhoods or hidden corners not yet explored in previous volumes, and, we hope, writers not yet exposed to our company. Contributions to the Akashic Noir Series are bound by mood: our authors are challenged to capture the sometimes intangible moods of “noir” and of “place”. The stories run the gamut from darkly-toned literary glimpses to straight-up crime fiction, while similarly capturing the unique aura of the story’s location.
Our web model for the series has one further dimension: A 750-word limit. Sound like murder? It is. But so are Mondays.
“Concealed Cash Stash” by William S. Hubbartt
When you grow up in Springfield, Illinois, you’ve heard the stories about Paul Powell and the concealed cash stash. . .
“Case Closed” by James Glass
Detective Harry Crenshaw glanced at the pamphlet one more time. . .
“Falls Roads” by Frank Ladd
I lived on a farm on Falls Road in those days. . .
“Memphis” by Robert R. Moss
Parnham tells me to come downtown. I stop to get cigarettes. On the shelf behind the cashier are brown paper bags of nuts. I buy one, then continue on to Central and park my car across from the courthouse. . . .
“White Reaper” by Nolan Knight
Raindrops glistened about Sue’s minivan the day she left . . .
“Unsafe” by Ron Riekki
There’s nowhere more unsafe than the back of an ambulance. . .
“Rump Shield” by Paul Renault
They pitched their Good News. He wasn’t buying it. Not on the worst day of his life, not ever. . .