To write about crime is to focus upon American life in extremis: as if distilled, pure. The complex and overlapping worlds of criminal behavior and law enforcement, highly publicized criminal trials, the dissolving of the putative barrier between “business” and “crime”—a subculture of intense interest in the phenomenon of serial killers and a new awareness of “victims’ rights”—these have become significant culture issues; as in a novel by Balzac or Dostoyevsky, in which a dense swath of society is minutely examined, the anatomizing of both high-profile crimes and more ordinary, even quotidian crimes has become a way of exposing the American soul. The considerable success of Akashic Books’ ambitious Noir Series is both a testament to this American preoccupation with crime as a way of decoding American life and a symptom of the preoccupation. Noir isn’t invariably about crime, nor is the subject of crime invariably a noir subject, but the two are closely bound together, as in this collection of original, highly inventive, and disturbing noir stories, poetry, and art set in the “Garden State”—a title meant to be taken literally (for New Jersey is beautifully rural, hilly, and even pastoral—once you are off the Turnpike and out of range of those powerfully pungent smells of industry), though many inhabitants of the state would guess that it’s meant as a cruel irony.
