Suburbs of suspense! Freeways of fury! Levittowns of lust! Garden Cities of greed! (I'm pretty sure that cover shot is from Long Island City, which is actually in Queens, but hey it's still connected to the glacial moraine that is Lawn Guyland.)

My story “Ending in Paumanok” will appear in Long Island Noir, due out this May from Akashic Books. The anthology is edited by Kind Kaylie Jones and also features the works of Jumpin’ Jules Feiffer, Madcap Matthew McGevna, Nice Nick Mamatas, Quick Qanta Ahmed, Chummy Charles Salzberg, “They Call Him Mr. Coleman” Reed Farrel Coleman, Tough Guy Tim McLoughlin, Sweet Sarah Weinman, Jazzy JZ Holden, me, Smart Sheila Kohler, Jolly Jane Ciabattari, Snazzy Steven Wishnia, Kinetic Kenneth Wishnia, Amiable Amani Scipio, and Timeless Tim Tomlinson. Pre-order a copy now. As with other books in the Akashic city series, the stories in this book take place in different towns and neighborhoods in the given locale. My story takes place in Southhampton and Riverhead but most of all in Stony Brook. Here’s an excerpt from the beginning of my story:

ENDING IN PAUMANOK

by R. Narvaez

Mary hated driving so close to the water. She couldn’t even see it—an incoming storm blackened the sky and the sea beneath it—but she could sense the Atlantic pulsing out there, just off the passenger side, moving like some great predator teasing its prey. “Out of the cradle endlessly stalking,” said Mary to herself.

She stepped on the gas. There was no traffic to weave through that early in the morning.

She took Dune Road to the reservation, then turned on to Old Point Road. Tommy Hawk’s Trading Post was just where Lawrence said it would be. A weathered cigar store Indian leaned on its side in front.

When Mary shut off the car, her hands were shaking.

For the whole story, buy the book!

I’ll be doing readings and signings this May in the City and on the island. Stay tuned for details.

MY KOOKY, BAWDY, college-educated Aunt Terry and I had often discussed our family’s Taíno roots. My family comes from Puerto Rico, and the Taínos were the Native Americans who inhabited the Greater Antilles and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean at the time when Christopher Columbus arrived to gentrify the ‘hood. Some say every trace of Taíno blood was erased by the Spanish and by time. But, according to the study funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, 61 percent of all Puerto Ricans have Amerindian mitochondrial DNA. Indeed, Taíno showed on the faces of all the women in my family, especially Terry, high cheek-boned and reddish skinned.

Read the rest here.

THE HOLLOW MAN, John Dickson Carr

The Hollow Man would make Raymond Chandler kick a hole in a stained glass window. The book’s protagonist, Dr. Gideon Fell, is one of those idiosyncratic, overly clever characters who exist only in cozy mysteries, someone you would never want to know socially in real life — because wherever he goes someone dies. He is also exactly the kind of fellow Chandler decries in his essay “The Simple Art of Murder”: “The hero’s tie may be a little off the mode and the good gray inspector may arrive in a dogcart instead of a streamlined sedan . . . but what he does when he gets there is the same old futzing around with timetables and bits of charred paper and who trampled the jolly old flowering arbutus under the library window.”

But in trying to write my own crime fiction, I have been intrigued by the idea of clues, of leaving evidence around to engage and perplex the reader. TV’s Columbo is one of those types of clue-strewn mysteries. After Columbo, ahem, I mean Peter Falk died, I read an interview with one of the shows co-creators, William Link. Link mentioned that his writing partner Richard Levinson and he were influenced by Carr, someone I’d never heard of. Curious, I Googled Carr and found that he was quite popular in his the 1930s and ’40s and that one of his best known works was The Hollow Man (aka The Three Coffins) . . . I had to read it.

Read the rest here.

Joan Jett, eat yer heart out

I’ve a new story in Black Heart Magazine’s Noir issue, edited by Jailbreakin’ Jimmy Callaway and featuring Daniel B. O’Shea, Cameron Ashley, AJ Hayes, Jonathan Woods, Nik Korpon, Chris Deal, Alexander Kraft, Chris Benton, Kieran, Garnett, Keith Rawson, among many others. And it’s only $2.99! Download it already. Here is a teaser from my story:

Monkey in a Barrel
By R. Narvaez

A NAKED WOMAN with a gun can be a lot less interesting than you’d think. When the gun is pointed at you. And when the lady in question — as lovely as she is with high, pointed breasts, razor-sharp hipbones, and knee dimples cuter than Minnie Mouse — has killed twice before, without pause, without guilt.

“I like you, Kempe,” she said, not getting any closer, but getting slightly colder, it seemed.

“This is sad to me.”

“I’m not exactly doing cartwheels about it myself.”

“You’re a waste of good material.”

“Sure. Like an ugly blonde.”

For more, go here.

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

I have a new story up in the very cool and very noir flash fiction journal Powder Burn Flash. Here’s an excerpt.

Good Fences

By R.Narvaez

Joe walked out his front door, down the stoop, and over to Frank’s door. He rang the bell twice.

“I want to talk to you about your dogs,” Joe got around to saying.

Frank was 68, a retired cop. Well over six feet tall, he stood behind the barely opened door and blocked any view of the inside. His bushy eyebrows didn’t move. His big, fig-shaped face stayed blank.

“They bark all day. They never stop barking,” Joe went on. “Then they do their business right there by the fence. You can smell it. It brings flies. You know what I mean.”

“What do you want me to do about it?,” said Frank.

Read the rest here.

UPDATE: Only Ken and I showed up to panel, but it was still a fun event. Good audience. Great questions. However, you are not forgiven, John.

YOU DON’T HAVE A CLUE Latino Mystery Stories for Teens
Editor: Cortez, Sarah
Review Date: March 15, 2011
Publisher:Piñata Books/Arté Público Pages: 320 Price ( Paperback ): $16.95 Publication Date: April 30, 2011 ISBN ( Paperback ): 978-1-55885-692-9
Category: Fiction

Cortez complements her adult level Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery (2009) with 18 new tales (from a largely different set of Latino/Latina authors) featuring teen characters and concerns. Readers with a taste for the gruesome will be delighted by Xander’s discovery of a freshly severed human arm in his school locker in R. Narvaez’s hilarious and memorable “Hating Holly Hernandez” or the bloody, eye-gouging battle with alien fugitives in Mario Acevedo’s leadoff “No Soy Loco.” Along with scary tales of murder, attempted murder and kidnapping, less violent crimes solved by young detectives include stolen auto parts, santitos (religious figurines) and costume jewelry—along with an encounter with possible ghosts and a vision of the enraged Aztec goddess Coyolxauhqui rising up over Venice Beach in Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s “The Tattoo.” Several authors explore moral or ethical gray areas. Sergio Troncoso contributes an anti-mystery in which a teenager simply shrugs off a near-fatal allergic reaction and moves on, and, in another ingenious twist on conventions, Carlos Hernandez crafts a smooth-talking Bronx teen who cements his reputation as a “cop-whisperer” when a face-blind friend’s girlfriend supposedly disappears after posting a suicide note. Only one—a too-sketchy short-short from Daniel A. Olivas—really misses the mark. Overall, a consistent, well crafted collection. (Short stories. 12-16)