At Home in the Dark

"Noir fiction comes in many forms, as multiple award–winning thriller and mystery writer Block points out in this stellar collection. Sometimes noir carries the trappings of the hard-boiled style—dangling cigarettes, mean streets, gunsels—but not always. These 17 original stories cross genres, styles, and settings with abandon, but they are all very dark indeed, from a James Reasoner western story to Joe R. Lansdale’s chilling 'The Senior Girls Bayonet Drill Team,' which depicts a high-school competition in which sport and butchery have joined hands. Elaine Kagan’s 'Hot Pants' features a young woman caring for a father sliding into dementia (Is there anything darker than that?), while fending off harassment at work. The panic and hopelessness of her circumstances are as disquieting as it gets. Duane Swierczynski’s novella depicts a couple dealing with their adult daughter’s addiction and a criminal son-in-law who wants custody of his daughter. Swiercynski does a masterful job of shifting between past and present to tell his story. A fine collection that sticks to its theme while demonstrating remarkable variety."
— Wes Lukowsky in Booklist

" I will be greatly surprised if the Lansdale, Hill, and Benedict stories do not each appear in at least one “year’s best” SF, fantasy, and horror anthology."
—Anthony Cardno

The crime fiction canopy's a broad one, with room to give shelter to writing of all sorts, as editor Lawrence Block shows with At Home in the Dark: “Some of these stories have one or both feet planted in another genre. James Reasoner's story is a period western, Joe Lansdale's is bleakly dystopian, and Joe Hill's novelette slithers through a little doorway into another world. “And now that I've singled out those three, I suppose I should go ahead and list the rest of the gang: N. J. Ayres, Laura Benedict, Jill D. Block, Richard Chizmar, Hilary Davidson, Jim Fusilli, Elaine Kagan, Warren Moore, Joyce Carol Oates, Ed Park, Nancy Pickard, Thomas Pluck, Wallace Stroby, and Duane Swierczynski. “If you're looking for a common denominator, two come to mind. They're all dark stories, with nothing cozy or comforting about them. And every last one of them packs a punch. “Which is to say that they're all very much At Home in the Dark—and we can thank O. Henry, master of the surprise ending, for our title. 'Turn up the lights,' he said on his deathbed. 'I don't want to go home in the dark.'”


Genre: Mystery