San Diego Noir

MORGAN HUNT’S stint in the navy brought her to San Diego, where she lived for twenty-seven years, and where she set her Tess Camillo mystery series. She found work in the city as a technical writer, copywriter, video scriptwriter, instructional designer, and medical editor. Her poems have appeared in literary journals, and she’s written for Writer’s Digest. Now a resident of Ashland, Oregon, she is finishing a mystery screenplay.

KEN KUHLKEN’S novels have won the St. Martin’s Press/ PWA Best First P.I. Novel contest and been selected as finalists for a Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award and a Shamus Award for Best P.I. Novel. His California Century novels, featuring detective Tom Hickey and sons, are: The Loud Adios, The Venus Deal, The Angel Gang, The Do-Re-Mi, The Vagabond Virgins, and The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles.

MARTHA C. LAWRENCE grew up in a haunted house in Rancho Santa Fe, California. Inspired by her plentiful psychic experiences around San Diego County, she wrote the Elizabeth Chase mystery series, which earned nominations for the Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, Shamus, and Nero Wolfe awards. A former acquisitions editor for Simon & Schuster and Harcourt publishers, she is also the writing partner of best-selling business author Ken Blanchard.

MARIA LIMA is a writing geek with one foot in the real world and the other in the make-believe. Though her Blood Lines series is set in the Texas Hill Country, San Diego is also a city of her heart. She loves downtown and the crazy, awesome people who hang out there. If it weren’t for that pesky thing called “needing to make a living,” she’d be in San Diego every day.

JEFFREY J. MARIOTTE lived in San Diego for twenty-four years. During his time there, he managed one bookstore, opened independent specialty bookstore Mysterious Galaxy with his wife and another partner, helped build two publishing companies into industry powerhouses, fathered two children, and became a professional writer. He has published dozens of novels, even more comic books, and a double handful of short stories. For more information, visit jeffmariotte.com.

T. JEFFERSON PARKER’S eighteen novels include Silent Joe and California Girl, both winners of the Edgar Award for Best Novel. Parker is midway through a four-book Border Quartet that deals with how the drug wars in Mexico are impacting the United States. The first, Iron River, was published in 2010, and the second, The Border Lords, in early 2011. He has lived in San Diego County since January of 2000.

LUIS ALBERTO URREA is the author of The Queen of America, a sequel to the best-selling The Hummingbird’s Daughter. He is also the author of the best sellers The Devil’s Highway and Into the Beautiful North. His story in Phoenix Noir won an Edgar Award. Urrea was born in Tijuana, Mexico, and moved to San Diego at the age of five. He spent much of his boyhood in National City and Shelltown.

DON WINSLOW is the author of fourteen novels, including The Winter of Frankie Machine, The Dawn Patrol, and The Gentlemen’s Hour, all set in San Diego. When not writing, he likes driving up and down the Pacific Coast Highway on his quixotic yet noble search for the perfect fish taco. He lives on a small ranch in San Diego County.

Also available from Akashic Books

LOS ANGELES NOIR

edited by Denise Hamilton

360 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95

^*Winner of Edgar and Southern California Independent Booksellers Association awards; a Los Angeles Times best seller

Brand-new stories by: Michael Connelly, Janet Fitch, Susan Straight, Héctor Tobar, Patt Morrison, Emory Holmes II, Robert Ferrigno, Gary Phillips, Christopher Rice, Naomi Hirahara, Jim Pascoe, and others.

“These seventeen very different stories confirm just how many places L.A. has become … Janet Fitch, as usual, operates at a scary level of intensity. Her story, ‘The Method,’ opens with a string of zippy onel-iners that out-Chandler Chandler … I wanted to take my eyes off the page and couldn’t.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

LOS ANGELES NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS

edited by Denise Hamilton

336 pages, trade paperback, $15.95

Classic stories by: Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy, Leigh Brackett, James M. Cain, Chester Himes, Walter Mosley, Naomi Hirahara, Jervey Tervalon, Kate Braverman, Yxta Maya Murray, and others.