“The Mess in Red Hook” by John Jeremiah
Bogo got the call from Sammy. It sounded all wrong. “Bogo, the bastard brought a crew to the exchange. They damn near killed us, but don’t worry, we still got the goods . . .”
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.
“The Wisdom We Already Know” by Gila Green
The zooming increases in volume with each second. Vroom, vroom. Miri looks over her shoulder and screams . . .
“Little Men of the NCAA” by Sean Murphy
This is what I do. I take Mickey over to Nemo’s. It’s right across the river from the track. Still a pain in the ass though. Rillito was flooded, monsoons and all . . .
“Getting Even” by Bern Sy Moss
He stamped the snow off his boots, brushed it off the shoulders of his jacket, and hit his Stetson against his thigh, leaving small puddles where the snow hit the warm floor and melted. He looked around the bar and saw the only empty stool next to the guy that had been sitting in the row ahead of him on the bus. He took the seat . . .
“Class Warfare” by Donald McCarthy
I left Los Angeles and moved to Long Beach, California, because I thought it’d be less cold—I don’t mean the temperature, I mean the atmosphere, the lack of caring, the judgment, the sheer disdain for those who haven’t made it. I escaped LA, but not the hell that it is to be a homeless woman . . .
“She Lay Down With Dogs” by Tauno Biltsted
Hers wasn’t the first body to be found in the overgrown lot that once was a marsh that sucked and pulled with the tidal waters of the East River . . .
“Execution” by Scott Scheible
Rage. The worst kind. That’s what filled Brody Altmeyer’s entire body after he finished reading the TechCrunch article on his iPhone . . .
“Lily’s Last Libation” by Curtis L. Todd
The evening sun appeared to rush toward the horizon much sooner than it had yesterday . . .