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 light dripping out of the few remaining lit windows coagulated in the humidity. From the playground, Rachael watched as the houses went dark. The small bag at her feet didn’t move at all and shadows turned to wax against everything they touched. Unlit porches and the bricks buckled in the sidewalks like crowded teeth and the weatherworn all shined with night . . .
Bullets zoomed past him in every direction. Detective Crosby ducked behind a barrel in an alleyway near the warehouse. He crouched low—his pistol gripped tight . . .
The pain was an explosion of red at the base of his skull. His mouth was bitter, like burnt coal. Ernesto Dela Cruz slowly opened his eyes. He had to, he wasn’t dead. Yet . . .
I am sitting in Row A, Seat 1, dressed in a double-breasted dark oxford gray suit, a plain white shirt, and a dark blue silk tie . . .
We saw him running. Down, down. From the mountain, across tracks, across highway, State Route 111, Southern California, right there alongside the Salton Sea. Salton Sea. Why is it named so? . . .
I was seventeen in 1965. The “Sally Bumps” gang hung out at Vinny’s Bar. Their main racket was stealing copper from the telephone company . . .
When we weren’t shoplifting, me and Sach 72 would go to the Bay Ridge yard and jump kids for their paint . . .
The magnificent yacht followed the racing boats into the roughest part of the channel—where the Atlantic meets the Caribbean . . .