“Rhumba” by Alec Binnie
Detective Owen Newlin stashed the stolen LaSalle in the alley behind the Colonnade apartment house and climbed the fire escape, which rose through an open air shaft.
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.
“Each Night” by Christopher Moore
Her Mum thinks it’s a bereavement group. The kids think it’s a ‘special class’ that will make mummy better and smarter. Age-appropriate lies, but both have done the trick, as she’s never had to make excuses again beyond the first couple of times.
“Finally Sleep” by Gissel Reynoso
“Ready to go?” the store manager asks me. I respond almost too excitedly: “Most definitely, I am exhausted.” To say I am exhausted is an understatement. I don’t remember the last time I got a full night’s sleep.
“A Steep Grade” by Reed Kuehn
His legs ached as he cleared each oversized stair, the taste of acid burning the back of his throat. Slowly he climbed the face of the foothill known locally as The Incline.
“Ghillie Suit Man” by Esmeralda Gomez Fisher
The willowy figure is first spotted alongside the trail, a few feet ahead of her in the scraggy woodland. She counts the number of steps she will take to position herself behind him for optimal throat-cutting proximity.
“The East Side of Pershing” by Richard Risemberg
I told William to meet me in the alley between Fifth and Sixth, on the east side of Pershing Square. Pershing in those days was where LA began its slump towards the homeless camps of the dried-up river.
“Buddy” by Joanne Godley
“”BAM, BAM!” The report from his handgun caused folks to drop to the floor and scurry away like cockroaches seeking cover.”
“The Prenup Murders” by Kenton K. Yee
“Here’s a supercluster of 100,000 galaxies.”