Crime Spree
Edited by Sandy DeLuca and Trey R. Barker
Introduction by Edward Bryant
December Girl Press $16.00
Not quite horror, but surely dark enough to deal with in a place called Chiaroscuro (literally Light-Dark in Italian), is this handy little anthology from December Girl Press. Spanning from noir lite to near splatter and including most of what might lie between those poles, the book 
does a splendid job of reviving the feel of black and white classic movies.

Stories tend to be short, sharp and quick, go-for-the-throat with not a lot of character development, but in many it's generally not missed because they turn more on the tone and feel than they do on their plots or characters. But never fear, there are plots aplenty as guys and dolls with gats and bats deal with rats and others who do them wrong.

Among the stories, a couple of continuing characters show up to revive our interest in their lives. Martin Zolotow,  indestructible protagonist of the Bram Stoker Award winning novel THE LICKING VALLEY COON HUNTERS CLUB, has gotten the girl but where's he taken her is the question. Brian A. Hopkins keeps the fun and cringy stuff happening fast and furiously as Zolo and Kendra stop at "The Tumble Rustlers Snack and Save" and meet the Bieber clan. Suffice to say, no one's quite the same afterwards. Meanwhile, Gary Jonas fills in the newest chapter in the continuing saga of his somewhat low-rent assassin, and in "The Multi-Level Hitman" introduces our laconic and pragmatic non-hero to the pyramid model for murder while neatly lampooning that corner of the business world.

In "Crazy For You," Brian Keene and Michael Oliveri concoct the book's most extreme tale - cannibal love and Mob corpse disposal intersect one crazy night in this vision of a brutal underworld's underworld. The authors' cheeky over-the-top quality allows some humor to peek through the macabre for a memorable wrap-up to the anthology.

Femme fatales drive the action in Greg F. Gifune's moody "Forget-Me-Nots," the book's stylish opener, and in both Kurt Newton's "The Mole Trap" and Tim Curran's "No Kind of Lady." All three feature a weak male lead pulled helplessly into the clutches of a woman who's no good for him, though with very different results. All are entertaining, but it's worth noting that Curran's tale manages to best mimic the literary noir tone.

Violette Malan's "Attitude Adjustment" and Mary SanGiovanni's "Fury" both rest on surprising turnabout, while Sean Doolittle's "Summa Mathematica" takes away the protagonist's one quality that could help him. Trey Barker's "How Still Her Eyes" uses Grand Guignol to good effect, while Thomas S. Roche's "All Cats Are Grey" and Sandy DeLuca's "Nicky Ryan" explore that noir staple, the protagonist who just can't help him/herself.

Most of the stories in this thin but attractive volume deliver the goods in a big way, and if a couple of them could stand to lose a cliche or three, well, sometimes a familiar image or line is part of the fun when the intent is a homage to one of literature's (and cinema's) most imitated forms. The tough-guy and -gal swagger needed to carry these off is there in every story and pays dividends by giving the anthology a fairly even keel to float on. If you love a good hot cuppa noir, this blend's for you.