When Dave Thompson, owner of one of my favorite independent booksellers in the country, Murder by the Book in Houston, asked me to contribute to a forthcoming anthology called A HELL OF A WOMAN, I jumped at the chance. A HELL OF A WOMAN: An Anthology of Female Noir will be published by Busted Flush Press in December of 2007.

Edited by the very talented Megan Abbott, (Edgar, Barry and Agatha award-nominated author of THE SONG IS YOU, DIE A LITTLE and the upcoming QUEENPIN), and with a foreword from the amazing Val McDermid, this anthology about the women of noir fiction promises to be a gem.  In addition to myself, other contributors include Sara Gran, Vicki Hendricks, S.J. Rozan, Allison Gaylin, Sarah Weinman and more!

I was thrilled to write about my favorite noir author Patricia Highsmith. Here is the first paragraph from that essay “In some ways, I suppose I have always felt a bit alienated by noir fiction, although I adore that smoky, mysterious atmosphere — the hourglass-shaped dame half in the shadows, the cigarette dangling from pouting lips, the impossibly virile man with a gun and a low ball of whiskey.”

Read more in A HELL OF A WOMAN: An Anthology of Female Noir (Busted Flush Press/2007) click on the image below.

A HELL OF A WOMAN: An Anthology of Female Noir