Mickey Finn Vol. 2: 21st Century Noir

by Michael Bracken (Editor), Trey R. Barker (Contributor), John Bosworth (Contributor)

Mickey 21st Century Noir, Volume 2 , the second entry of the hard-hitting anthology series, is a crime-fiction cocktail that will again knock readers into a literary stupor.

Contributors push hard against the boundaries of crime fiction, driving their work into places short crime fiction doesn’t often go, into a world where the mean streets seem gentrified by comparison and happy endings are the exception rather than the rule. And they do all this in contemporary settings, bringing noir into the 21st century.

Like any good cocktail, Mickey Finn is a heady mix of ingredients that packs a punch, and when you’ve finished reading every story, you’ll know that you’ve been “slipped a Mickey.”

The nineteen contributors, including some of today’s most respected short-story writers and new writers making their mark on the genre, Trey R. Barker, John Bosworth, Michael Bracken, Scott Bradfield, S.M. Fedor, Nils Gilbertson, J.D. Graves, James A. Hearn, Janice Law, Hugh Lessig, Gabe Morran, Rick Ollerman, Josh Pachter, Robert Petyo, Stephen D. Rogers, Albert Tucher, Joseph S. Walker, Sam Wiebe, and Stacy Woodson.

321 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 13, 2021

About the author

Although he is the author of several books—including the private eye novel All White Girls—Michael Bracken is better known as the author of more than 1,300 short stories published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Espionage, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, The Best American Mystery Stories and many other publications.

Bracken is editor of six crime fiction anthologies, including The Eyes of Texas and the three-volume Fedora series, and is co-editor (with Trey R. Barker) of the serial novella anthology series Guns + Tacos.

Bracken served one term as vice president of the Private Eye Writers of America and three terms as vice president of the Mystery Writers of America’s Southwest chapter.

Reviews

[Joe Kraus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve been thinking a lot recently – and attempting to write – a lot of noir recently, and this volume reminds me why I do.

First, this book proves there is a market for the stuff. People read this. I love great literary short fiction, and I treasure what it feels like to read the best of it. But, I confess, I get angry and frustrated at the not-best literary short stories. I don’t have patience for stuff that doesn’t work as well as I think it should.

I love a good noir story, too, but I have more patience for the run-of-the-mill of it. A noir story doesn’t have to be great to grab me. It can be good enough.

And that’s my second point here. Everything here is good enough. I may get tired of the stories that resolve on plot twists, and I may be a little past being moved by the ones that end with our narrator/protagonist getting killed, but there’s an urgency even to those less successful stories.

Most of the ones here simply work. They take an angle, pursue it, and wrap up without fuss. This is black-coffee literature, enough to wake you up and face the rest of the day.

A handful do stand out for me as well. As I say, the good stories are good enough – and Bracken seems to have a good sense of what to exclude.

My favorite is the opener, Nils Gilbertson’s “Washed Up.” I love that it turns on an ethical choice or down-and-out narrator has to make. He learns that a fellow loser has been lying to him and their mutual friends, glorifying his younger self. He can tell what he knows, or he can let the tawdry myth endure.

It’s a great setting and a great, quiet resolution to the scenario. Well done all around.

Stephen Rodgers’s “They May Be Gods” has a great setting – a skilled carpenter who studies and resents the tourists who come for Cape Cod summers and whose whims constitute the economic weather for the locals. When a visiting beauty gets interested in him, he can’t help getting drawn in. I could do without the over-the-top fact of her murdering her boyfriend, but I very much like that our protagonist is called on to build a coffin. Clever and satisfying.

And Rick Ollerman’s “All Over but the Shooting” gives us a nice calm-in-the-midst-of-a-heist narrative with characters who feel real enough to trust and betray one another.

I’m not sure how much of this is memorable, but that’s sort of the point of pulp. It has to be good enough to compel you in the moment. After that, it may be disposable, but that doesn't make it second rate.

[Gabriela Galescu · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Noir” seems to mean “Redneck” is this collection

The majority of the stories are well written and that’s not something one encounters very often. I could have easily given it four stars. However, it feels like most of the stories in this collection take place in rural US and I personally found it very hard to maintain interest. At one point I thought I was reading the same story on a loop: a bunch of hapless criminals, with impoverished vocabulary get up to no good and spiral out of control as a result of their severe intellectual limitations and under the influence of alcohol and drugs. Boring!

[Barry Fulton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uneven, but many gems among the 19 short stories--all decidedly noir. Among the best are "Washed Up" by Nils Gilbertson; "Confessions on a Train from Kyiv" by Hugh Lessig,; and "Salvation" by the anthology's editor, Michael Bracken.