Baltimore Noir - Laura Lippman [0]
Series concept by Tim McLoughlin and Johnny Temple
Published by Akashic Books
©2006 Laura Lippman
Baltimore map by Sohrab Habibion
ePub ISBN-13: 978-1-936-07019-0
ISBN-13: 978-1-888451-96-2
ISBN-10: 1-888451-96-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2005934820
All rights reserved
Akashic Books
PO Box 1456
New York, NY 10009
Akashic7@aol.com
www.akashicbooks.com
ALSO IN THE AKASHIC NOIR SERIES:
Brooklyn Noir, edited by Tim McLoughlin
Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Tim McLoughlin
D.C. Noir, edited by George Pelecanos
Manhattan Noir, edited by Lawrence Block
Dublin Noir, edited by Ken Bruen
Chicago Noir, edited by Neal Pollack
San Francisco Noir, edited by Peter Maravelis
FORTHCOMING:
Twin Cities Noir, edited by Julie Schaper & Steven Horwitz
Los Angeles Noir, edited by Denise Hamilton
London Noir, edited by Cathi Unsworth
Wall Street Noir, edited by Peter Spiegelman
Miami Noir, edited by Les Standiford
Havana Noir, edited by Achy Obejas
Bronx Noir, edited by S.J. Rozan
New Orleans Noir, edited by Julie Smith
Lone Star Noir, edited by Edward Nawotka
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
PART I: THE WAY THINGS USED TO BE
LAURA LIPPMAN Locust Point
Easy As A-B-C
ROBERT WARD Old Northwood
Fat Chance
JACK BLUDIS Pigtown
Pigtown Will Shine Tonight
ROB HIAASEN Fell’s Point
Over My Dead Body
RAFAEL ALVAREZ Highlandtown
The Invisible Man
PART II: THE WAY THINGS ARE
DAVID SIMON Sandtown-Winchester
Stainless Steel
MARCIA TALLEY Little Italy
Home Movies
JOSEPH WALLACE Security Boulevard-Woodlawn
Liminal
LISA RESPERS FRANCE Howard Park
Almost Missed It By a Hair
CHARLIE STELLA Memorial Stadium
Ode to the O’s
SARAH WEINMAN Pikesville
Don’t Walk in Front of Me
PART III: THE WAY THINGS NEVER WERE
DAN FESPERMAN Fells Point
As Seen on TV
TIM COCKEY Greenspring Valley
The Haunting of Slink Ridgely
JIM FUSILL Camden Yards
The Homecoming
BEN NEIHART Inner Harbor
Frog Cycle
SUJATA MASSEY Roland Park
Goodwood Gardens
About the Contributors
INTRODUCTION
GREETINGS FROM CHARM CITY
I belong here,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote of Baltimore, “where everything is civilized and gay and rotted and polite. And I wouldn’t mind a bit if in a few years Zelda and I could snuggle up together under a stone in some old graveyard here. That is a really happy thought and not melancholy at all.”
Fitzgerald was far from the first or last writer to feel a kinship with this mid-Atlantic city, although not all would have worded their sentiments as he did. Given that it was his wife’s psychiatric problems that drew him here, Fitzgerald, who belongs more to St. Paul than to Baltimore, can be forgiven his cynical view.
As it happened, the couple ended up buried in suburban Rockville, Maryland, but Fitzgerald’s Baltimore roots went deeper than Zelda’s consultations with the city’s best psychiatrists. He was a descendant of Francis Scott Key, who penned our unsingable national anthem, a song that Baltimoreans defend only out of civic loyalty. We can’t sing it either, but we love to shout the “OHHHHHHHHHH” at baseball games, in celebration of our beloved Orioles. Which is odd because a ru Baltimorean, one who speaks in the local accent known as Bawlmerese, refers to the team as the Erioles, as surely as he calls a blaze a “far” and “warshes dishes in the zink.” (Baltimore joke: Why were the three wise men covered with ashes when they came to visit the Baby Jesus? Because they came from a far. Guess you had to be there. Correction: Guess you have to be here)
Edgar Allan Poe lived here, got a boost to his literary ambitions by winning a prize here, and, far more famously, died here, creating twin mysteries—the truth of what happened to him in October 1849, and the identity of the “Poe Toaster,” who visits the original Poe gravesite on the