Milwaukee Noir by Tim Hennessy

Milwaukee is changing.  Old abandoned factories are being rehabilitated or demolished.  Rundown neighborhoods are being refurbished.  These stories are written about the places still in bad shape where people of the same nature (bad) hang out.

Get ready to read dark stories, where people die over nothing and everyone carries a gun or a knife.

Akashic Books sent me an ARC of this book to read for review (thank you).  It has been published, so you can grab a copy now.

These are brand-new stories from: Jane Hamilton, Reed Farrel Coleman, Valerie Laken, Matthew J. Prigge, Shauna Singh Baldwin, Vida Cross, Larry Watson, Frank Wheeler Jr., Derrick Harriell, Christi Clancy, James E. Causey, Mary Thorson, Nick Petrie, and Jennifer Morales.

All of the stories were written well and represented noir as they should.  My favorite story was:  "Night Clerk" by Larry Watson.  There's a man at the hotel who came for cancer treatment and was told it wasn't working.  Now he's waiting to die and he just sits in the lobby, looking at nothing and not visiting.  It drives the clerk nuts and he tells him so.  Then the man comes to talk to him and offers to kill anyone he'd like dead.  He picks a professor that derailed his degree and plan to become an author and stole his wife.  The man has him write down where he works and where he hangs out.  The professor does die from a beating and the dying man doesn't come back to the hotel.  He's left him a gift, though.  Never bother a dying man...  This story has a very ironic ending and I like them.

Why don't you give it read and let me know which story you liked?