A Time For Violence: Stories with an edge.

I have never entered the world of written crime noire before and was pleased to the take this opportunity of a free download for a review. I have read all the other excellent reviews on Goodreads of this book and don't think I can surpass their quality so I will just add my own impressions. The book consists of twenty-six short stories about crime and violence. This means twenty-six different approaches and written styles. The stories are varied and each one comes as a new surprise. If you don't like the plot you will be carried through it by the author's style. There is blood and violence, I normally don't like this in media, but I could accept it here as it was the written word in my mind and not graphic pictures seen from my eyes. The violence didn't seem real. I found it exciting to discover new ways of writing; new imagery and simile that I learnt from. I could almost taste the blood in my mouth. The pedigree of the writers is impressive. I didn't know any of them so researched some of them out of curiosity. Andy Rausch, please forgive me! I should have known about you. Your writing pedigree is impressive. I stand in awe. The stories are firmly based in American culture. Words are different, things are different. Being English I didn't always understand them; I often don't understand plots of police crime, have to see a TV programme more than once to "get" the plot when it gets complicated. I sometime become lazy and don't "get" it at all and don't bother to find out, so just soak in the feeling and ethos. Did this with some of the stories here. The American approach made it harder. Will finish off by talking about just one story which stuck out for me, "Guns, Mirrors" by Richard Godwin. I found this a bit of a puzzle. Not set in America but Surrey, England, about a man fantasising about the American Cowboy Dream and living it out in Old Blighty. At least, that's the way I interpreted it. Either this man really did come from Kentucky, or he was so  delusional that he though he came from Kentucky, I was never sure about the reality of this. I always felt the dichotomy of what was real and what wasn't. The truth blurred between the two. No one really imports a thousand bottles of Wild Turkey from Kentucky, no-one keeps one thousand buffalos in a field in Surrey. It is all a fantasy in his head. In the end I felt nothing but pity for the characters living in such a psychosis. I give credit to the author for writing so cleverly to give out this blurred image. I think he gives a clue from the title of the story. This anthology is a collection of interesting and varied stories. I appreciate the quality and diversity. In antithesis I felt that it  approach the subject in a somewhat fixed way; stereotyped images of money, revenge, misogyny, blood, robbery and violence, gender and race. Ideas and thought systems stuck in the past: ideas have now now moved on.