Tart Noir by
Stella Duffy
pbk out August 02
(Pan)
at £6.99
A transatlantic collection of stories from UK writers like Val McDermid and Martina
Cole and US counterparts like Sparkle Hayter and Vicki Hendricks. The authors set
out to showcase the range of talent now creating "strong, funny, independent women,
who could hold their drink, go head to head with men and still be the centre of their
own universe". Between the pages of Tart Noir women are out for action, revenge,
freedom, power and a helluva good time. Stories range from the dark and disturbing
as in Denise Mina's Alice Opens the Box and Karin Slaughter's Necessary Women,
to the delightfully funny as with Jessica Adam's tale of the help a Brighton fortune-
teller gives to the local bobby in I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside. Henderson's
witty take on the talk show brings famous femmes fatales Phaedra and Medea onto
the studio couch while Lisa Jewell's Lobelia, cruelly mocked by the lads next door
enlists the help of Joan Crawford to deliver suitable retribution. In the bizarre but
moving Stormy, Mon Amour by Vicki Hendricks, our heroine and her dolphin lover
produce a child, and in Martha Grace, Duffy explores passion and persecution from
the point of a small town outsider. Laced with hot sex, chilling fantasies and
questionable morals Tart Noir brings together a marvellous range of voices and goes
someway towards challenging the existing imbalance, which means most crime
awards still go to male writers and most anthologies are heavily dominated by male
writers.
(
Cath Staincliffe
author of the popular Sal Kilkenny mysteries set on the mean streets of Manchester)
