Les Standiford

Les Standiford is the author of twenty-four books and novels, including the award-winning John Deal thriller series. His nonfiction publications include Last Train to Paradise, and Bringing Adam Home, a Wall Street Journal number one true crime best seller. He has previously edited the best-selling original 2006’s Miami Noir which featured brand-new stories from some of the city’s best living writers In Miami Noir: The Classics (Akashic Noir) Standiford turned his eye toward the outstanding noir fiction of yesteryear. The nineteen stories in this collection are divided in four parts: “Original Gangsters” (which includes the oldest story in the book, “Pineland” by Marjory Stoneman Douglas, written in 1925), “Perilous Streets, Lethal Causeways,” Miami’s Vices,” and “Gators & Ghouls.” In his introduction, Standiford notes that “When terrible things threaten in some ominous neighborhoods, in some tough cities, a reader of a story set in those locales might be forgiven for expecting the worst; but when calamity takes place against the backdrop of paradise, as we have here in Miami, the impact is all the greater.” Besides contributions by Stoneman Douglas and Standiford, the volume include stories by Elmore Leonard, Lester Dent, Zora Neale Hurston, Brett Halliday, Damon Runyon, Edna Buchanan, James Carlos Blake, Douglas Fairbairn, Charles Willeford, T.J. MacGregor, Lynne Barrett, Preston L. Allen, John Dufresne, Vicki Hendricks, Christine Kling, Carolina Garcia-Aguilera, and David Beaty. Kirkus Review praised it as “A collection that shows how far a city can come and still maintain a strong noir tradition.”