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and she would have spent even more time here if the editors of the Sun had agreed to hire her earlier. She attended public schools and has lived in several of the city’s distinctive neighborhoods, including Dickeyville, Tuscany-Canterbury, Evergreen, and South Federal Hill. She is the author of ten books, including the Baltimore-centric Tess Monaghan novels.

SUJATA MASSEY graduated from Johns Hopkins University and worked as a reporter at the late but great Baltimore Evening Sun before turning to a life of crime fiction. She is the author of nine novels, most recently The Typhoon Lover She enjoys living in Roland Park, though she has pledged never to take up gardening or drive a Humvee.

BEN NEIHART lived in the “landmark” Marylander apartment building in the Charles Village neighborhood of Baltimore for three years during the mid-1990s. He is the author of the books Hey Joe, Burning Girl, and Rough Amusements and his work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, Travel & Leisure, and the Baltimore Sun. He currently lives in New York.

DAVID SIMON is a former crime reporter with the Baltimore Sun and the author of Homicide and The Corner, two works of narrative nonfiction. He is also a writer and executive producer of HBO’s The Wire.

CHARLIE STELLA played Strat-O-Matic baseball as a kid, until his father put him on a twelve-step program to rein in his addiction. In Stella’s world (Strat-O-Matic), the Orioles beat his Mets in seven back in ’69 (when he was thirteen).

MARCIA TALLEY is the Agatha and Anthony Award winning author of six novels featuring amateur sleuth Hannah Ives, set in Annapolis, Baltimore, and other locales around Maryland’s scenic Chesapeake Bay. She is author/editor of two star-studded collaborative serial novels, Naked Came the Phoenix and I’d Kill For That, and her short stories have appeared in more than a dozen collections.

JOSEPH WALLACE has written more than fifteen books and dozens of articles on topics as diverse as baseball, natural history, medicine, and the invention of the light bulb. “Liminal” is his first piece of published noir. He’s grateful to Laura Lippman for requesting it, especially since he’s a lifelong New York Mets fan with vivid memories of the 1969 World Series.

ROBERT WARD was born and raised in Baltimore and now lives in Los Angeles, where he writes fiction, screenplays, and television dramas. He is the author of six novels, including Red Baker winner of the Pen West Award for Best Novel. “Fat Chance” is about the pull of Charm City, with its neighborhoods and personal history, versus “success” in Los Angeles.

SARAH WEINMAN is the crime-fiction columnist for the Baltimore Sun and the proprietor of the literary blog “Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind” (at www.sarahweinman.com). Her stories have appeared in several print and online publications, including Dublin Noir. She lives in Manhattan, only a Metroliner away from Baltimore.

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Table of Contents

Introduction

PART I: THE WAY THINGS USED TO BE

LAURA LIPPMAN

Easy As A-B-C

ROBERT WARD

Fat Chance

JACK BLUDIS

Pigtown Will Shine Tonight

ROB HIAASEN

Over My Dead Body

RAFAEL ALVAREZ

The Invisible Man

PART II: THE WAY THINGS ARE

DAVID SIMON

Stainless Steel

MARCIA TALLEY

Home Movies

JOSEPH WALLACE

Liminal

LISA RESPERS FRANCE

Almost Missed It By a Hair

CHARLIE STELLA

Ode to the O’s

SARAH WEINMAN

Don’t Walk in Front of Me

PART III: THE WAY THINGS NEVER WERE

DAN FESPERMAN

As Seen on TV

TIM COCKEY

The Haunting of Slink Ridgely

JIM FUSILL

The Homecoming

BEN NEIHART

Frog Cycle

SUJATA MASSEY

Goodwood Gardens

About the Contributors