Won this book thru the Early Review program. Too many other books to read. I choose not to read it (especially after not being able to finish Berlin Noir which I also won, and ultimately gave it away. I gave it a 1/2 star only to indicate in my tracking that it was a DNF. It doesn't indicate the quality of the work itself ( )

Another great collection of crime from the Noir series. I love the way they used the movies as a theme and organizing principle. The stories were varied and fun if you like crime. I have a lot of fun with these books and always find things to enjoy and new authors to explore. It's always a treat and they read quickly too. ( )

Fourteen of The Netherlands’ premier authors of crime and literary fiction contributed stories to this collection, with the editors—top-rated crime authors themselves—providing the fifteenth. Amsterdam Noir is the latest in Akashic Books’ long-running series of place-based crime anthologies.
If this enterprise is in part intended to impart a vision of the locale and its residents through the lens of crime, this collection is another success. Whenever a story purports to represent a certain place, you can fairly ask yourself, could these events have unfolded this way anywhere else? Geography, history, and culture all affect what can and does take place in a city and the official and unofficial reactions to events.
Appel and Pachter assigned the stories to four broad headings inspired by classic film noir, and below I briefly describe a story or two under each of their headings. The collection includes both well established authors, like Theo Capel, and writers new to the scene, like Karin Amatmoekrim. Meet some of the very best Dutch crime writers, right here in these pages.
Out of the Past
Welcome to Amsterdam by Michael Berg is a story of revenge—a revenge the wronged man never thought he could achieve. It’s pretty strong stuff. Berg was the 2013 winner of the Golden Noose, the award for the best Dutch-language crime novel of the year. Herman Koch, who wrote 2013’s best-selling crime novel, The Dinner, contributed Ankle Monitor, which launches with a brilliant first line: “Maybe it was a mistake to go back to my old neighborhood on the very first day of a weekend leave.” No stopping reading there.
Kiss Me Deadly
All three of these stories are about ill-conceived love and all are written by women, interestingly. Silent Days by Karin Amatmoekrim proves that just because a woman is old and alone doesn’t mean she is helpless.
Touch of Evil
Here you have Satan himself, a pedophile, an alcoholic fratricide, and a man channelling Ted Bundy (for an international touch), plus a hard-working police detective who unexpectedly comes out on top in Theo Capel’s entertaining Lucky Sevens.
They Live By Night
Echoing that film’s theme of inescapable tragedy, most of these stories are from the victim’s point of view, but Abdelkader Benali’s The Girl at the End of the Line is told through the eyes of a Moroccan police officer assigned to find the killer of a Muslim girl. Winner of a top literary prize, Benali opens this story, “A farmer found her with her head facing southeast, toward Mecca, as if in prayer.” It’s an effective reminder of the pluralistic culture of Western European cities today and a strong intimation of the layers of social complexity the story will probe. ( )

This is the second noir compilation I've read from this publisher (I've also read Belfast Noir) and while it wasn't my favorite, it wasn't bad. Some of the short stories in this are clearly better than others, but that's bound to happen when you have fifteen different authors spinning tales of deceit, darkness, murder, and intrigue. The thing I most enjoyed about this collection (and all in this series) is that the setting (Amsterdam) plays such a crucial element in every story. These dark, gritty stories make you feel as if you really are in Amsterdam. Some of the short stories deal with gangs, psychotic episodes, murder, revenge, and twisted fantasies. Again some are clearly better than others, but don't let that get in the way of reading this! ( )

Amsterdam Noir is an excellent addition to the uncommon mystery anthology series Akashic Noir. In this edition, editors René Appel and Josh Pachter selected twenty-two short stories that evoke the noir sensibilities of Amsterdam. They took inspiration from four classic noir films. Out of the Past, Kiss Me Deadly, Touch of Evil, and They Live By Night. What a genius idea!

The four stories in Out of the Past are rooted in past experiences, of war, marriage, grief, and even a long-ago murder. I thought they were all strong stories but particularly loved Spui 13. The next section, Kiss Me Deadly, has three stories of love, though Silent Days is not about romantic love at all, but the kind of sisterhood that can make a woman defend another woman she doesn’t even know because she wants to do something to be proud of. A Touch of Evil has four stories and three are clearly representations of evil’s malignancy, but Lucky Sevens strikes me differently. A woman is murdered and that is evil, but the killer is not a central character. The last section, They Lived by Night, has four stories. I thought The Girl at the End of the Line was haunting and beautifully done.

I loved Amsterdam Noir and think its selection of stories was excellent and the way they were organized was a stroke of genius. There were a few stories that were not as strong as the rest and oddly, the weakest story was Starry, Starry Night by the co-editors. I suppose there had to be some tie-in to Van Gogh somewhere, but having a guy named Vincent get his ear slashed by muggers is not it. I appreciated the sly effort, but it turned out to sound like something they concocted during a beer-addled, and-then-we-can conversation.

I received an e-galley of Amsterdam Noir from the publisher through Edelweiss

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2019/02/04/amsterdam-noir-by-rene-ap... ( )