Miami Noir: The Classics

About the Contributors

Preston L. Allen is a recipient of a State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship, and has authored the novels All or Nothing, Jesus Boy, and the allegorical Every Boy Should Have a Man (a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award). The New York Times has called him “a cartographer of autodegradation,” placing his work on a continuum with that of Dostoevsky, William S. Burroughs, and Charles Bukowski. Allen is associate professor of English and creative writing at Miami Dade College.

Lynne Barrett has received the Edgar Award for best mystery story and, for her collection Magpies, the Florida Book Awards’ fiction gold medal. Some of her recent work has appeared in Mystery Tribune, the Hong Kong Review, Necessary Fiction, and Just to Watch Them Die: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Johnny Cash. Jai-Alai Books has just released her anthology Making Good Time: True Stories of How We Do, and Don’t, Get Around in South Florida.

David Beaty was born in Brazil of American parents. A graduate of Columbia University, he earned an MFA in creative writing from Florida International University. He has lived in Greece, England, and Brazil, and currently resides in Miami. His story “Ghosts” was selected for Best American Mystery Stories 2000, and his story “The Last of Lord Jitters,” originally published in Miami Noir, received an honorable mention for Best American Mystery Stories 2007, edited by Carl Hiaasen.

James Carlos Blake was born in Tampico, Mexico, and raised in Brownsville, Texas, and Miami, Florida. After service in the US Army Airborne and a stint as a properties officer in a county jail, he earned an MA degree and taught literature at various colleges and universities before devoting himself to writing full-time. He venerates the music of Jelly Roll Morton and Philip Glass.

Edna Buchanan won a Pulitzer Prize and a George Polk Award for her work on the Miami police beat. She reported more than five thousand violent deaths, and lived through the Cocaine Cowboys, the Mariel boatlift, and major riots. When editors insisted she cover only the “major murder” of the day, she resisted. How does one choose? Every murder is major to the victim. So she covered them all. Then she wrote novels. Lots of them.

Lester Dent (1904–1959) is best remembered for Doc Savage, but he was distinguished beyond that series. He wrote only two stories for Black Mask magazine, both featuring Miami detective Oscar Sail. Dent’s first stab at the character resulted in “Luck,” the story in this volume, which stars a different version of Sail. In the 1930s, Dent lived on his schooner, Albatross, which led to creating Sail, and which may have also influenced John D. MacDonald’s houseboat-dwelling Miami sleuth, Travis McGee.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas (1890–1998), best known for her 1947 book The Everglades: River of Grass, was a conservationist, author, journalist, and women’s suffrage advocate. Initially a reporter for the Miami Herald, Douglas became an outspoken advocate for preserving the Everglades, earning her the nickname “Grand Dame of the Everglades,” and was instrumental in its gaining status as a national park. Douglas was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bill Clinton.

John Dufresne has written two story collections and six novels, including Louisiana Power & Light and Love Warps the Mind a Little, both New York Times Notable Books of the Year. He has also written four books on writing, two plays (Liv & Di and Trailerville), and has cowritten two feature films. His stories have twice been selected for Best American Mystery Stories. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and teaches creative writing at Florida International University in Miami.

Douglas Fairbairn (1926–1997) was an American author from Elmira, New York. Aside from his memoir, Down and Out in Cambridge, Fairbairn’s books, including A Squirrel Forever, A Squirrel of One’s Own, and Street 8: A Novel, focus on South Florida, where he lived for the greater part of his years until his death in 1997. His novel Shoot was developed into a movie starring Cliff Robertson in 1976.

Carolina Garcia-Aguilera is the Cuba-born, Miami Beach — based, award-winning author of ten books, as well as a contributor to many anthologies. She is best known for her Lupe Solano mystery series. Her books have been translated into twelve languages. Garcia-Aguilera became a private investigator — a profession she has practiced for over thirty years — so she could credibly write the novels featuring a PI as a protagonist.

Brett Halliday (1904–1977) was the primary pen name of Davis Dresser, under which he wrote and later commissioned installments of the popular Michael Shayne series. Dresser wrote numerous mysteries, westerns, and romances as Halliday, cofounded the Halliday and McCloy literary agency, and established the Torquil Publishing Company. Dresser was a founding member of the Mystery Writers of America in 1945, and received an Edgar Award from the organization in 1954.

Vicki Hendricks is the author of the noir novels Miami Purity, Iguana Love, Voluntary Madness, Sky Blues, and Cruel Poetry, which was an Edgar Award finalist in 2008. Her short stories are collected in Florida Gothic Stories. She currently lives in central Florida, the rural locale of her most recent novel, Fur People.

Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) was a novelist, folklorist, dramatist, ethnographer, and cultural anthropologist. She is the author of four novels, including Their Eyes Were Watching God; two books of folklore; an autobiography; and over fifty short stories, essays, and plays. She attended Howard University, Barnard College, and Columbia University. She was born in Notasulga, Alabama, and grew up in Eatonville, Florida.

Christine Kling is an avid sailor as well as the author of eight nautical thrillers. Her first series of five novels is set in Florida and features a female tug and salvage captain, Seychelle Sullivan. The Shipwreck Adventures, her second series, are international thrillers based on real historical shipwrecks. Currently, Kling and her husband live in Antalya, Turkey, where they are building their next boat, an all-aluminum expedition passage maker designed for exploring the high latitudes.

Elmore Leonard (1925–2013), once called the “Dickens of Detroit” by Time magazine, first began writing fiction in the fifth grade. Although he initially gained notoriety through his westerns, Leonard later became an extremely prolific author of crime novels, short stories, and screenplays, all distinct in their focus on characters and realistic, Detroit slang — ridden dialogue. During his career, Leonard was the recipient of the Edgar, Peabody, and National Book awards, among others.

T.J. MacGregor (a.k.a. Trish MacGregor, Alison Drake, and several other names) is the author of forty-two novels and several dozen nonfiction books on synchronicity, astrology, tarot, and dreams. Her most recent novel is Skin Shifters, and she won the Edgar Award in 2003 for her novel Out of Sight.

Damon Runyon (1880–1946) was a well-known journalist and author of short stories, many of which were collected into his popular 1931 book, and later Broadway show, Guys and Dolls, which is now considered a classic of musical theater. Although he gained notoriety through political and sports journalism, Runyon’s trademark was his interest in people over facts. This led to his exaggerated caricatures of Broadway locals, cementing his career as one of New York’s most sought-after writers.

Les Standiford, who edited 2006’s Miami Noir, is the author of twenty-four books and novels, including the award-winning John Deal thriller series and the works of narrative nonfiction Last Train to Paradise, the One Read choice of a dozen public library systems, and Bringing Adam Home, a Wall Street Journal number one true crime best seller. He is director of the MFA program in creative writing at Florida International University in Miami.

Charles Willeford (1919–1988), who wrote seventeen novels including the popular Hoke Moseley series, was described by the Atlantic as “the unlikely father of Miami crime fiction.” His books have been published in twenty languages. Four of them — Cockfighter, Miami Blues, The Woman Chaser, and The Burnt Orange Heresy — have been made into movies. A decorated World War II tank commander, Willeford is buried in the Arlington National Cemetery.