We got a pile of freebies when we attended NoirCon and we have SOHO Crime to thank for most of them. If you’re like me, you have an endlessly growing “to read” pile and I thought I’d let you know about a few of the new arrivals. One of the books in our bag was Henry Chang’s Chinatown Beat. Looks like this is the first in his Detective Yu series. Gary Disher’s Hell to Pay is next on the list, he’s an Australian crime writer. Next in alphabetical order is Leighton Gage’s The Ways of Evil Men, part of his Mario Silva series. The late Mr. Gage lived much of his life in Brazil where the stories are set. Timothy Hallinan checks in next with Crashed, the first of the Junior Bender series. The Danish duo of Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis close out the set with The Boy in the Suit Case, the first of the Nina Borg series. Like I said these were all freebies and that was very generous of the SOHO folks.

One of the other things we were treated to was a presentation by Bronwen Hruska, SOHO’s Publisher. She talked about the challenges of being an independent in a world dominated by the big corporations. She was quite interesting, intelligent, and charming, as was her Associate Publisher Juliet Grames. I got to meet them both, just enough to say hello, and was impressed by how much they loved their work and how passionate they were about promoting their stable of writers. (One of them was Irishman Stuart Neville who was kind enough to pose for a photo and autograph his debut novel The Ghosts of Belfast for me—that one I bought!). They focus on international mysteries and have authors from all over the globe. They publish up to ninety titles a year under the SOHO Crime imprint. Ms. Hruska was presented with the Jay and Deen Kogen Award for publishing excellence at Saturday’s banquet. Seems well-deserved!

I found a bunch of other write-ups about the events in Philadelphia. K.A. Laity did a four-part series on her blog and Carole Mallory contributed a story to Huffington Post. Pulp Curry’s Andrew Nette added his thoughts to his blog and Marshall Stein chipped in on the NoirCon site. Finally T. Fox Dunham shared his thoughts about his participation in the Existential Noir panel (he also linked to my post for OOTG). I certainly had a stimulating experience and its nice to know so did some of the other attendees. 2015 will be my Year of Noir as I intend to write my own rather than just read other people’s stuff and blog about it. I’ll be happy to loan out any of the books I mentioned above so drop me a line if you are interested. In fact, I’ve got heaps of noir books that deserve a wider audience. Expand your horizons and start reading more degenerate fiction!