Paris Noir anthology

I'd seen a couple of the other anthologies in this series from Akashic Books in the library before but Paris was the first one that prompted me into borrowing it, as I've actually been there. I figured that part of the idea behind a one-city setting was that you could immerse yourself, and it helps if you can picture the streets, hear the sounds. All the stories were translated from French, which adds an authenticity (and sometimes a confusion, though no more than I occasionally get from, for instance, American writing).

I nearly gave up on this book, I will admit - the first 2 or 3 stories I dipped into were, to my mind, more monosyllabic brutality than richly atmospheric crime fiction. However, I persevered and the next couple were OK, and then I hit upon The Revenge of the Waiters by Jean-Bernard Pouy. It takes a theme I often play around with (but have never yet finished a story on), that of the familiar stranger and particularly the way we notice their absences and wonder what's become of them. With a welcome injection of dark humour, Pouy sets a band of bored waiters on an investigation into such an absence, with escalating consequences.

La Vie en Rose by Dominique Mainard makes good use of a technique that's sometimes seen as old-fashioned, that of having our main character sit down and listen to a long and almost unbroken exposition of the back-story from the other main character. As an interesting twist, the listener is a proto-crime-writer pretending to be a private detective in order to gather material, but he soon finds he's out of his depth.

I'm not sure if I'd read other volumes in the series, but if I do dip in, I'll let you know how they measure up.