For the uninitiated, Akashic Books is a small publisher who has found a niche in producing a series of short story collections, each set in a different city or location and featuring writers who live or have some connection to that area. The stories are all noirish in tone, although that depends largely on what each guest editor interprets as noir. The quality of these collections is generally uneven, depending largely on the available writer population. Despite all that, or maybe because of it, I like the series. I usually finish a book with new authors to look into and a few to now avoid.

This book, which was edited by Janine Armin, was a good addition to the Akashic Noir collection. There were solid stories from well known authors Peter Robinson and Andrew Pyper as well as from less prominent writers like Gail Bowen and Michael Redhill. There were a few lackluster entries, including one I could not finish (hint: don't write in dialect unless you are very, very good at it. And maybe not even then). Some of the stories used the Toronto setting as integral to the plot, others just referenced place names. ( )

Not a particularly memorable collection, but there's just something about reading about the places you live and the places you know. Some of us don't get that very often. ( )