DC Noir 2: The Classics

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When Johnny Temple, the publisher of Akashic Books, approached me with the idea of editing a sequel of sorts to D.C. Noir, our best-selling 2005 anthology of original Washington crime fiction, I told him I’d need to think on it. After all, I felt as if we’d covered the waterfront with that collection, and wasn’t particularly interested in being involved with a second-tier batch of stories meant to cash in on the original. Johnny assured me that this would not be the case. What he was shooting for was the top-shelf of Washington short fiction, previously published stories of a noirish bent by some of the best writers who have come out of or written about this town. Now I was interested.

What I found, once I was in the hunt, was that it was not as easy as I imagined it would be to find stories that would fit the bill. I first spent several days at the Washingtoniana Room of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, searching and reading, and found only a couple of stories that I liked. A young man who worked there put me in contact with a Margaret Goodbody, formerly of the MLK, now with the Bethesda Library in Montgomery County, Maryland. Ms. Goodbody suggested stories by Julian Mazor, which I eventually used, and helpfully pointed me in the direction of several databases and private collections. It’s fair to say she got me going, and I’m very grateful for her assistance. In addition, Ibrahim Ahmad of Akashic Books was particularly diligent in researching, coordinating, and reviewing material that he felt would make a good fit for our project.

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