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.
Sal Puccini cruised down Main Street past the Baseball Hall of Fame and a lifetime of bad memories. Thirty years and nothing had changed—same small-town redbrick buildings, same sheen on the lake, same irritating kid brother . . .
“We are not descended from fearful men,” the box filled with wires and lights says to her as she sits, waiting, on the anniversary. She stares into its eyes. This is the sign . . .
Everybody has a right to life apparently. I disagree. Some people deserve to die. People like him . . .
Brown and mustard. I stared at the painted mushrooms on the wall, the same way I did every day. In the eighties, Brementown was living in seventies colors. Brown and mustard . . .
Angie made Ed jealous, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. She loved to drink and flirt. Drugs too, if somebody else was buying. But after Katrina it was different. Most of the bars were closed, most of the men gone to Baton Rouge, Houston, who knew where . . .
There’s someone dying on the side of the highway tonight because my daddy taught me how to walk quiet and how to use a peacemaker . . .
Big Lew’s ample hips flopped over the sides of the wooden chair. The lunch crowd hadn’t yet begun to stream in . . .
“Aren’t you hot in that?” She gestured at my sport coat. . . .