Toulouse Noir

BRAND-NEW STORIES BY: Al Baylac, Maïté Bernard, Tanella Boni, Manu Causse, Gaspard Chauvelot, Pascal Dessaint, Francis Émourgeon, Sarah Grall, Adeline Grand-Clément, Nicolas Rouillé, Hafid Saïdi, and Benoît Séverac. All stories translated from French by David and Nicole Ball.

From the Introduction by Charles-Henri Lavielle:

“In crime novels and in many other types of fiction, I have often been struck by a troubled feeling, as if the stories could not exist outside of their specific locations; that the writing provides a way for the reader to physically feel a place. For me, selfishly, this was probably the main reason I agreed to edit this collection of short stories . . . There are a few other circumstances that might justify my place in this adventure. I’ve lived in Toulouse for more than thirty-five years. I went to the university here, I’ve walked around its streets at night, have gone to bars, nightclubs, and concert halls . . .

“If the stories in the Akashic Books Noir Series are rooted in cities—Toulouse in this case—even reduced to their specificity, they also speak to our common humanity. “Nothing human is foreign to me,” Alban Bensa said repeatedly. And that’s probably enough of a reason to read this collection, even if you never set foot here.”