Women of the Mean Streets

by J.M. Redmann (Editor), Greg Herren (Editor), Laura Lippman

Women. Crime. Justice. At least the search for it. On the mean streets, the back allies, the dark corners.

These are stories of tough women in hard places. The nights are long, the women are fast, and danger is always a short block or quick minute away. Edited by award winning author/editors J.M. Redmann and Greg Herren, Women of the Mean Streets is an anthology of some of the top, tough women crime writers today, noir stories with a lesbian twist.

Genres: Mystery, Lesbian, Anthologies, Crime, LGBT, Short Stories, Queer

288 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2011

About the author

Also writes under the pseudonym R. Jean Reid.

Jean Marie Redmann is an American novelist best known for her mystery series featuring New Orleans private investigator Micky Knight.

Main themes of Redmann's novels are the protagonist's troubled childhood and how it affects her adult life, discrimination based on sexual orientation and alcoholism. Her novels follow the tradition of hardboiled fiction. Redmann's third book The Intersection of Law and Desire won the Lambda Literary Award for lesbian mystery.

Jean M. Redmann is a gay rights activist and works as the Director of Prevention at NO/AIDS Task Force.

Reviews

[Agirlcandream · Rating 4 out of 5]

This anthology was a pleasure to read. Most stories are not for the faint of heart, just like I like them. Some favourite authors here along with some new ones I will be checking out in the future.

Laura Lippman’s A.R.M and the Woman
Desperate housewives in Washington.
Clever plan, definitely a cold and calculating mean girl approach to solving a financial problem.
3*

Den Of Iniquity by Lori L. Lake
A one woman crusade to rid the world of scum. I like the quick buildup of tension and the all around bad assery of this woman.
3.5*

Boomerang by Carsen Taite
Luca Bennett, Bounty Hunter, down to her last ten bucks and desperate for a job takes on a job hunting for a mob boss’s girlfriend on the run from the law. Crime noir done well.
4*

The Economics of Desire by Jeane Harris
The ups and downs of age-gap romances. Reality achieved. Enjoyed this.
4*

Some Kind of Killing by Miranda Kent
Told in first person from the only survivor in a household of death and destruction. A thirteen year old girl survives the carnage. Is she a reliable narrator or the mad one in a family of mad ones? Loved the build up of tension, the not knowing who to believe, the courage of the young girl or the insanity. You’ll have to read this to decide.
5*

Anything for the Theater by Clifford Henderson
Some women will do anything to save a theater, or cop a feel.
3.5*

Social Work by Kendra Sennett
I could see it coming but I couldn’t look away. Things which seem to be too good to be true usually are.
3.5*

Devil in Training by Ali Vali
Cain Casey’s graduation night celebrations from business school proves to friends and enemies that she is capable of carrying the Casey family business into the future. Don’t mess with Cain.
4.5*

The Darkest Night of the Year by Victoria A. Bronworth.
A Charlie Manson- esque killing. Graphic violence and cold sociopaths. Not for the faint of heart. So well done.
4*

Lost by JM Redman
Mickey Knight puts in the time and serves up some long overdue revenge.
3.5*

Chasing Athena by Diane Anderson-Minshall
Who is this author I’ve never read before. A PI searching for a five night stand who left without saying goodbye follows a trail of dead strippers searching for the one that got away. Loved this and will look for more books by this author.
5*

Lucky Thirteen by Anne Laughlin
Chilling and well done. Don’t go into Real Estate. Don’t do it.
5*

Feedback by Lindy Cameron
Dystopian future. Way too sci-fi for me.Nothing against the author. I’m not the right reader for this one.
DNF

[Corrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Women of the Mean Streets, put together by J.M. Redmann (of Mickey Knight fame) and Greg Herren promised tough women in hard places and we certainly got that.

I was lured to this anthology because of the J.M. Redmann short that was included and to my utter joy it was one starring Mickey Knight. Mickey somewhere after hurricane Katrina. We follow her looking for bad seed cousin Bayard (remember him?) who has disappeared and let me tell you it is a highly satisfying tale.

The stories are not really noir, at least I didn’t get that noir feeling. It was tough and the women didn’t always met a happy end. Don't expect warm fuzzies anytime soon.

Contributing to this anthology were: Laura Lippman, Lori L. Lake, Carsen Taite, Jeane Harris, Miranda Kent, Clifford Henderson, Kendra Sennett, Ali Vali, Victoria A. Brownworth, J.M. Redmann, Diane Anderson-Minshall, Annie Laughlin and Lindy Cameron.

I basically loved all stories but some really stood out, like Lori L. Lake’s tale of sweet revenge, Carsen Taite’s introduction to bounty hunter Luca Bennett pointing me to a series of books about the same character I bookmarked straight away (yay!), Miranda Kent’s story almost brought me to tears, Diana Anderson-Minshall is another author I need to read more off. Victoria A. Brownworth's story made me shiver. I will never look at duct tape the same way! The only sci-fy dystopian story (by Lindy Cameron) was the odd duck in this mix. I’ve read it before but don’t remember where or when.

As always, reading an anthology proves to be fruitful for my to-read pile as I usually discover new authors (or authors I forgot about). If you like crime this is certainly a book you want on your shelf.

f/f

Themes: bad girls, betrayal, revenge, being at the wrong place at the wrong time, no happy ending for everyone, high quality writing.

4 Stars

-----re-read-------

As I'm re-reading all of J.M. Redmann's Micky Knight stories, this one had to be added as well. Didn't go for all the stories this time, just the ones that stood out the first time around.

4 Stars

[A.W. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories started off sow but then became more interesting as I read on. Some stories surprised me in a good way as I was not expecting it to go that route.

It was nice to revisit characters I've red from some of the authors' full length novels.

Overall, it was a pretty good read.

Review also posted here: https://wp.me/p4Pp9O-N1

[Dide · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 star rating
All the stories here were enjoyable and of course some more than others. However most of the stories didn't literally live up to the title of the book...i mean with that title i was expecting literal street-life experiences with their expected surprise/gore/thrill/romance etc.
That said i actually enjoyed the time spent reading this.

[Mel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm afraid this just did not live up to it's promise. I was really wanting lesbian noir, that is not what I got. The first story was about a self proclaimed Soccor Mom who lived in a million dollar home! I'm sorry but those are not the MEAN STREETS I had envisioned!

Overall there were very few stories in the book that fit the noir style pulp that I was hoping for. The best was Chasing Athena which had a tough butch PI who was great, murders of prostitutes and crime that felt like it could have come out of the pulps. There was a very creepy story about a young girl who'd been horribly abused and witnessed the murder of her family. It wasn't really pulp in any way but was written in quite a disjointed dissociative state and was very good (though not a lesbian story either) There was a decent Mickey Knight story whose first novel I enjoyed, she is a noir style detective in modern day New Orleans. But the focus of the 2nd book was about how her cousin had abused her and here she didn't even mention that as she went looking for him as a missing person which was kinda bizarre.

Less good were the ones about the naive college student who got tricked into mudering a guy for oxycotin when she was supposed to be helping the homeless, a woman who was a real estate agent and quietly murdered, a woman who decided the perfect revenge for her abuser would be to set up him dealing in kiddie porn, a really badly cliched cyberpunk story where they characters spent their entire time explaining the world to each other instead of just experiencing it, Show not tell people!

In the end I'm glad I got this from the library and didn't buy a copy. They should have just advertised it as a loose collection of lesbian crime stories and it would have been much more accurate.

[fleegan · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I saw the cover of this book I was all, "Cool!"
And when I read the synopsis I was all, "THIS is going to be AWESOME."

Here's the synopsis:

"Women. Crime. Justice. At least the search for it. On the mean streets, the back allies, the dark corners.

These are stories of tough women in hard places. The nights are long, the women are fast, and danger is always a short block or quick minute away. Edited by award winning author/editors J.M. Redmann and Greg Herren, Women of the Mean Streets is an anthology of some of the top, tough women crime writers today, noir stories with a lesbian twist."

See? How could I not give this a shot?

Turns out, my expectations were really high. I was thinking that the book would be short stories about P.I.s, detectives, maybe bounty hunters? Now where would I get that idea? Was it the "mean streets, the back allies, the dark corners"? Was it the Mickey Spillane-y cover? Yes. Out of 13 stories maybe five or six have those type of characters, but the other half? I don't think they understood the assignment. I'm not blaming the authors, they wrote good(ish) stories, but some of them didn't belong in this book.

Three or four of the stories took place in the suburbs. I'm not saying you can't have noir in the suburbs, you totally can, but c'mon, not exactly "mean streets" there. Also, the last story is science fiction. Again, I'm not saying there's no such thing as noir in science fiction, but look at that cover and read that synopsis again. You can make a case for those stories. You can push the envelope, in fact, please do, and say that since they (the suburban and sci fi stories) are dark stories they fit the bill. I love pushing the boundaries. But in this case, with these stories, it just doesn't work.

On the stories themselves, I'd say four were totally worth reading and the rest were very forgettable.

If my expectations were too high and I'm judging this anthology too harshly, I'm sorry. I was really hoping for something like Nicola Griffith's Aud series, only with short stories, or maybe The Maltese Falcon but with lesbians. Maybe if it had had a different cover, or if the title and description weren't so heavy with the hardboiled style I could've just read it as a book with dark, creepy stories. But I feel like they're selling this book as one thing and giving you something else. That's dirty pool.

[Changeling72 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the collection of stories put together by JM Redmann and Greg Herren. A mixed bag, as these anthologies always are, but none the worse for that. I particularly enjoyed (if that's the right word) Lori L Lake's Den of Iniquity, about a woman avenging herself on the perpetrator of her childhood abuse - and then going on to wreak retribution on all abusers. Carsen Tate's Boomerang is an enjoyable private detective yarn; in Kendra Sennett's Social Work it is obvious to everyone but the first-person narrator, how things are going to turn out, but said narrator is to blinded by 'love' and mind-blowing sex to see what her 'girlfriend' is up to. Miranda Kent's Some Kind of Killing is ambiguous and all the more disturbing for the ambiguity - what exactly did happen in that house? I kept changing my mind over whether the narrator was indeed guilty of the crime or whether she was an innocent victim. Victoria A Brownworth's The Darkest Night of the Year is an equally disturbing tale, terrifying even - a vision of what sadistic pleasure some human beings can do to other human beings they don't know, have never met and happen to be 'unlucky'. It rather put me in mind of real-life killers such as Myra Hindley and Ian Brady. Lastly, I will mention Diane Anderson-Marshall's Chasing Athena. I really enjoyed this tale of a private detective chasing her 'lover' across America, never really sure if she was the potential victim or perpetrator of a series of prostitute murders. Who knew Portland, Oregon was such a den of sin!

[Jeffrey Ricker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. J.M. Redmann and Greg Herren really put together a fantastic collection of stories and show how differently writers can interpret the noir genre. There isn't a weak one in the bunch, but one of my favorites was the last story, "Feedback" by Lindy Cameron, who creates a hard, bitter war veteran in a grim future and gives her a glimpse of hope by the end. I really want to read more of this character.

Other stories that stood out for me were "Some Kind of Killing" by Miranda Kent, "Lucky Thirteen" by Anne Laughlin, and "Chasing Athena" by Diane Anderson-Minshall— but I thoroughly enjoyed the entire anthology.

[Elisa Rolle · Rating 5 out of 5]

2011 Rainbow Awards Honorable Mention (5* from at least 1 judge)

[Bonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable mix of dark stories with plenty of twists & turns.

[Jennifer · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got half way through this book and gave up. While the stories weren't necessarily poorly written, they weren't focused in on the noir aspect, and often only inferred the homosexuality of the protagonist.

If I'd read this book five years ago, I might have liked it. Five years ago I was much more into being edgy and avant garde for the sake of being edgy and avant garde. Five years ago I didn't know what noir was as a genre. Five years ago, I would have defined "noir" for you as something like "first-person narrative; mystery story; someone will probably die; private detectives." As it turns out, though I'm reading this coming off of taking a course on Film Noir, and a big part of that course was looking at what makes something "noir." Unfortunately, gritty, realistic writing and the occasional murder do not a noir story make.

The stories I read in this collection lacked a lot of the noir themes--justice, vengeance, desperation, failure, confusion; a lot of these themes were present, but in noir generally they're played out to the end, not cut off before they can come to a conclusion. Noir is about balance. There is dark, but the dark is always illuminated. In the first story, for example (and please note, I'm going to spoil this one, so if you're going to read this book, skip the next two paragraphs), a woman seduces a husband and wife and tricks the wife into killing the woman's husband and making it look like an accident so they can be together. If the wife, and not the woman, were the main character, the ending would have been fittingly noir--the wife would be forever separated from her lover, stuck in a marriage she hates, living with the guilt of murder on her shoulders without even the comfort of being near her beloved. Instead, with the woman as the main character, there is no balance. The protagonist gets everything she wants and then some: her house, her old life, her husband out of the picture, her children cared for, and the couple she seduced forever banished.

Now let's consider the movie (and I assume, also the book) Double Indemnity. Walter Neff is in the same position as the wife in the first short story. He's been seduced (although Neff knows he's been seduced), and then persuaded to help Barbara Stanwyck's character kill her husband for the insurance money. By the end of the movie, Neff is a ruined man, desperate, on the run, and without any of the things he hoped to gain by committing the murder. That is noir.

You don't get everything you ever wanted in a noir story. In a noir story, unless you are a femme fatale, and sometimes not even then, you are probably going to end up with less than nothing, or dead.

In any case, this book was a disappointment on a lot of different fronts. Not recommended.

[MEC · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good collection of mystery/crime short stories by some well known (and well loved) authors as well as some interesting entries by authors I'm not familiar with. The noir genre is near and dear to my heart (gotta love the bad girls) and some of the stories knocked it out of the park while others just didn't fit my idea of noir.

For me the standout stories that captured the noir feel best were:

ARM and the Woman by Laura Lippman - An upper middle class divorcee comes up with a rather dark solution to her problems with a baloon mortgage.

Some Kind of Killing by Miranda Kent - A fascinating tale told in first person that has you second and third guessing what happened behind closed doors.

Lost by J M Redmann - Not necessarily a noir story, but it has Mickey Knight, and it lets Mickey close up a few loose ends.

Lucky 13 by Ann Laughlin - A story about karma and revenge - the ending worked very well in this one.

[Everett Holmgren · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I saw this book, lurking on the shelf in the used book story, I was captive. I went back and ran my fingers down the spine and tried to convince myself I didn't really need it on several trips to the store before at last I gave in and bought it.

I mean, lesbian noir? Brilliant! Right? I have this lesbian noir story in my head and I figured seeing what other people have done might help me nail the right voice and tone, help me actually put that story on paper.

This collection was a huge disappointment. Only one story really fit what I think of as noir, and in a number of the stories the lesbian thing felt shoved in, as awkward as someone else's rib sitting in your ribcage.