Santa Cruz Noir (Akashic Noir) - Softcover

Elizabeth McKenzie's "The Big Creep" has been named a finalist for the 2019 Shamus Award for Best Private Eye Short Story presented by the Private Eye Writers of America!

"It's a thrilling, whip-smart book that will dazzle local lovers of crime fiction."
--Good Times Santa Cruz, Editor's Note

"Santa Cruz is a place of natural beauty, ocean breezes and family-friendly tourist attractions. But a new collection of short fiction stories explores a seedier side of this beach town filled with murder and mystery."
--KAZU FM

"Santa Cruz Noir delivers on noir sensibilities with an extra twist: it's that California mythology...It is this noir ethos that defines Santa Cruz Noir. After arriving at California's golden shores, life surely will be better. There is no place further to go."
--Book Riot

"Akashic's well-traveled, always-riveting Noir series has been to some serendipitous locales over the years, cities perfectly suited to crime fiction, some boasting a long noir tradition of their very own. But for me, just in terms of sheer allure and possibility, the new Santa Cruz collection is right up there at the top. A washed out seaside pleasure palace, nestled up against the hills and the surf, home to all manner of shady types and societal misfits, proximate to great wealth but possessed of an undeniable scruffiness, and above all, beautiful, with that low California sun so conducive to good noir."
--CrimeReads

"Bright joins the ranks of Akashic editors to rip the lid off the California coastal town that's never seemed less laid-back."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Santa Cruz Noir is teeming with other local details that will make readers do similar double takes. It's divided into three sections, the first of which is called 'Murder Capital of the World,' as if to put any question of when Santa Cruz's notorious serial killer lore is going to come up immediately to rest."
--Good Times Santa Cruz, cover feature

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. Following in the footsteps of Los Angeles Noir, San Francisco Noir, San Diego Noir, Orange County Noir, and Oakland Noir, this new volume further reveals the seedy underbelly of the Left Coast.

Brand-new stories by: Tommy Moore, Jessica Breheny, Naomi Hirahara, Calvin McMillin, Liza Monroy, Elizabeth McKenzie, Jill Wolfson, Ariel Gore, Jon Bailiff, Maceo Montoya, Micah Perks, Seana Graham, Vinnie Hansen, Peggy Townsend, Margaret Elysia Garcia, Lou Mathews, Lee Quarnstrom, Dillon Kaiser, Beth Lisick, and Wallace Baine.

From the introduction by Susie Bright:

Every town has its noir-ville. It's easy to find in Santa Cruz. We live in what’s called "paradise," where you can wake up in a pool of blood with the first pink rays of the sunrise peeking out over our mountain range. The dewy mist lifts from the bay. Don't hate us because we're beautiful--we were made that way, like Venus rising off the foam with a brick in her hand. We can't help it if you fall for it every time...

"If I lived in a place like this," visitors often say, "I'd wake up with a smile every day."

Oh, we do, thank you for that. There's no beauty like a merciless beauty--and like every crepuscular predator, she thrives at dawn and dusk. You're just the innocent we've been waiting for, with your big paper cone of sugar-shark cotton, whipped out of pure nothing. We have just the ride for you, the longest tunnel ever. Santa Cruz is everything you ever dreamed, and everything you ever screamed, in one long drop you'll never forget.