{"id":7784,"date":"2019-02-18T06:53:12","date_gmt":"2019-02-18T11:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7784"},"modified":"2019-02-18T06:53:22","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T11:53:22","slug":"amsterdam-noir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7784","title":{"rendered":"****Amsterdam Noir"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Edited by Ren\u00e9 Appel and Josh Pachter \u2013 Fourteen of The Netherlands\u2019 premier authors of crime and literary fiction contributed stories to this collection, with the editors\u2014top-rated crime authors themselves\u2014providing the fifteenth. Amsterdam Noir<\/a><\/em> is the latest in Akashic Books\u2019 long-running series of place-based crime anthologies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If this enterprise is in part intended to impart a vision of the locale and its residents through the lens of crime, this collection is another success. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whenever a story purports to represent a certain place, you can fairly ask yourself, could these events have unfolded this way anywhere else? Geography, history, and culture all affect what can and does take place in a city and the official and unofficial reactions to events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Appel and Pachter assigned the stories to four broad\nheadings inspired by classic film noir, and below I briefly describe a story or\ntwo under each of their headings. The collection includes both well established\nauthors, like Theo Capel, and writers new to the scene, like Karin Amatmoekrim.\nMeet some of the very best Dutch crime writers, right here in these pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Out of the Past<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Welcome to Amsterdam by Michael Berg is a story of revenge\u2014a\nrevenge the wronged man never thought he could achieve. It\u2019s pretty strong\nstuff. Berg was the 2013 winner of the Golden Noose, the award for the best\nDutch-language crime novel of the year. Herman Koch, who wrote 2013\u2019s\nbest-selling crime novel, The Dinner<\/em>,\ncontributed Ankle Monitor, which launches with a brilliant first line: \u201cMaybe\nit was a mistake to go back to my old neighborhood on the very first day of a\nweekend leave.\u201d No stopping reading there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kiss Me Deadly<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All three of these stories are about ill-conceived love and\nall are written by women, interestingly. Silent Days by Karin Amatmoekrim\nproves that just because a woman is old and alone doesn\u2019t mean she is helpless.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Touch of Evil<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here you have Satan himself, a pedophile, an alcoholic\nfratricide, and a man channelling Ted Bundy (for an international touch), plus\na hard-working police detective who unexpectedly comes out on top in Theo\nCapel\u2019s entertaining Lucky Sevens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They Live By Night<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Echoing that film\u2019s theme of inescapable tragedy, most of\nthese stories are from the victim\u2019s point of view, but Abdelkader Benali\u2019s The\nGirl at the End of the Line is told through the eyes of a Moroccan police\nofficer assigned to find the killer of a Muslim girl. Winner of a top literary\nprize, Benali opens this story, \u201cA farmer found her with her head facing\nsoutheast, toward Mecca, as if in prayer.\u201d It\u2019s an effective reminder of the\npluralistic culture of Western European cities today and a strong intimation of\nthe layers of social complexity the story will probe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Edited by Ren\u00e9 Appel and Josh Pachter \u2013 Fourteen of The Netherlands\u2019 premier authors of crime and literary fiction contributed stories to this collection, with the editors\u2014top-rated crime authors themselves\u2014providing the fifteenth. Amsterdam Noir is the latest in Akashic Books\u2019 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"****Amsterdam Noir - short stories from the new Dutch Masters of crime fiction","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,1288,40,632,126,120],"tags":[1514,1515,1516],"class_list":["post-7784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-culture","category-fiction","category-police","category-reading-2","category-short-story","tag-akashic-books","tag-josh-pachter","tag-rene-appel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Amsterdam.jpg?fit=323%2C423&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-21y","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7784"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7786,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7784\/revisions\/7786"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}