[.ca] Hard Boiled Love: An Anthology of Noir Love (ISBN 1894663454)

Amazon.ca:
Following the success of their anthology of hard-boiled detective fiction, Iced, Kerry Schooley and Peter Sellers have expanded their franchise to the territory of Hard Boiled Love. As the editors explain in the introduction, "Hard boiled love has always been an essential element of noir fiction and film--usually the weak, venal guy falling for the conniving girl," and they try further to connect it with the familiar Canadian theme of the darkness of the isolated soul. While the editors make this latter point well with the inclusion of Sinclair Ross's classic story, "One's a Heifer," their selections are not always equally successful. In a number of cases the stories elicit puzzlement or confusion rather than the shock and horror they probably intended. The best stories in the collection are those that stand the editors' original premise on its head, like Barbara Fradkin's "Baby Blues" and Jean Rae Baxter's "Loss." Sellers's own "Trophy Hunter" also injects some much-needed humour as well as a genuinely clever ending. While the Hard Boiled Love is still an enjoyable read, perhaps future anthologies should just stick to the original idea. After all, it worked. --Robyn Gillam