Wall Street Noir

Wall Street Noir

This anthology explores the dark side of finance from Manhattan to Bangkok and Tel Aviv, featuring new stories by Jim Fusilli, Lauren Sanders and more.

Wall Street often looks like a gleaming world of high-end professionalism where decisions to buy or sell are guided by expertise, formulas and dispassionate strategy. And sure, that’s one version of Wall Street. Let’s call it the CNBC edition. But this book is about another place, just beneath that shiny surface: a place where fear and greed have always held sway. Think WorldCom or Tyco; think Enron. Think Gordon Gekko.

Wall Street Noir illuminates a place whose boundaries have spread well beyond Trinity Church and the East River. In today’s global economy, Wall Street is everywhere: a borderless, virtual city encompassing Midtown Manhattan, Main Street, U.S.A., the maquilas of Honduras, the office towers of Shanghai, and the brothels of Bangkok. It’s a shadowy metropolis, as the stories in this exciting collection reveal, and one that’s far more Jim Thompson than Warren Buffet.

Wall Street Noir includes brand-new stories by John Burdett, Henry Blodget, Peter Blauner, Jason Starr, Megan Abbott, Reed Farrel Coleman, Stephen Rhodes, Twist Phelan, Tim Broderick, Jim Fusilli, David Noonan, Richard Aleas, Lawrence Light, James Hime, Mark Haskell Smith, Peter Spiegelman, and Lauren Sanders.

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About the Book
Starred Review. Spiegelman, the ideal editor for the Wall Street entry in Akashic's noir anthology series, assembles a stellar cast of 17 crime genre luminaries, many with financial backgrounds. Standouts include Peter Blauner's The Consultant, in which a pregnant business coach discovers La Donna within as she maneuvers a Bensonhurst-bred Don Corleone wannabe into a war he can't win; Twist Phelan's A Trader's Lot, in which commodities traders strategize on how to profit off a hurricane due to strike the Gulf Coast; and John Burdett's The Enlightenment of Magnus McKay, in which a lawyer representing a crooked Thai-Chinese businessman falls in love with a beautiful prostitute in Bangkok and slips into an opium dream from which he may never wake. Mark Haskell Smith, Jason Starr, Jim Fusilli and Reed Farrel Coleman also contribute fine stories. As this volume demonstrates, Wall Street is no longer restricted to lower Manhattan, but has become a worldwide theater in which greed, volatility and desperation often lead to crime.
– Publishers Weekly (starred review)
A-list tales of trading chicanery and depredation…a ‘strong buy.'
– Trader Monthly
An outstanding line-up of authors has produced one of the best entries yet in the long-running (Akashic Noir) series…engrossing.
– New York Sun
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Details
Publisher: Akashic Books
Publication Year: 2007
ASIN: B008SBHDRQ
ISBN: 9781933354231