Belfast Noir

Featuring brand-new stories by: Glenn Patterson, Eoin McNamee, Garbhan Downey, Lee Child, Alex Barclay, Brian McGilloway, Ian McDonald, Arlene Hunt, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Claire McGowan, Steve Cavanagh, Lucy Caldwell, Sam Millar, and Gerard Brennan.

From the editors' introduction:

"Few European cities have had as disturbed and violent a history as Belfast over the last half-century. For much of that time the Troubles (1968–1998) dominated life in Ireland's second-biggest population centre, and during the darkest days of the conflict--in the 1970s and 1980s--riots, bombings, and indiscriminate shootings were tragically commonplace. The British army patrolled the streets in armoured vehicles and civilians were searched for guns and explosives before they were allowed entry into the shopping district of the city centre...Belfast is still a city divided...

For all the shimmer and shine of the new Belfast, you can still walk a mile or two in almost any direction and find some of the worst deprivation in Western Europe. Those parts of the city have not moved on. While the middle class has enjoyed the spoils of the peace dividend, working-class areas have seen little improvement. The sectarian and paramilitary murals are still there: crude memorials to the fallen 'soldiers' of the conflict, to heroes and martyrs still revered. For a small outlay, you can tour these murals in a black taxi with a knowledgeable guide at the wheel, ready to tell you who died where. You can see Belfast's bloodstains up close and personal. This is the city that gave the world its worst ever maritime disaster, and turned it into a tourist attraction; similarly, we are perversely proud of our thousands of murders, our wounds constantly on display. You want noir? How about a painting the size of a house, a portrait of a man known to have murdered at least a dozen human beings in cold blood? Or a similar house-sized gable painting of a zombie marching across a postapocalyptic wasteland with an AK-47 over the legend UVF: Prepared for Peace--Ready for War. As Lee Child has said, Belfast is still 'the most noir place on earth.'"

Adrian McKinty was born and grew up in the north Belfast suburban town of Carrickfergus. He studied law at the University of Warwick and politics and philosophy at Oxford University. His first crime novel, Dead I Well May Be, was short-listed for the 2004 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award. His novel about a Belfast-based detective in the Royal Ulster Constabulary, The Cold Cold Ground, won the 2013 Spinetingler Award. Its sequel, I Hear the Sirens in the Street, was shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Award.

Stuart Neville's debut novel, The Ghosts of Belfast (published in the UK as The Twelve), won the Mystery/Thriller category of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was picked as one of the top crime novels of 2009 by both the New York Times and the LA Times. His subsequent three novels have been short-listed for various awards, including the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, and the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. The French edition of The Ghosts of Belfast, Les Fantomes de Belfast, won Le Prix Mystere de la Critique du Meilleur Roman Etranger and Grand Prix du Roman Noir Etranger.