Pittsburgh Noir

Introduction Private Moralities, Private Law

In 1996, my husband and I were on sabbatical leaves in the south of France. And the Steelers were playing in the Superbowl. How could we miss that? I located a bar in Monaco called Le Texan. Unfortunately, the Steelers were playing the Dallas Cowboys that time around, so when we got to the bar, the place was filled with braying people in Stetsons. One drunk man stood up and said, “Did anyone ever hear of anything good coming out of Pittsburgh?” The place was too noisy for him to hear me answer.

It was a should-have-won/could-have-won loss.

Not everybody in Pittsburgh is sports crazy, but most are. Scratch a Pittsburgher and you will hear about Bill Mazeroski’s home run that won the 1960 World Series, the catch known as “the immaculate reception” by Steeler Franco Harris, the amazing year of 1979 when the Pirates won the World Series and the Steelers won the Superbowl. The Pirates, the Steelers, and the Penguins play out our personal dramas. Didn’t look possible and then he did it. Or: That show of anger was the thing that turned it around. Or: All in their hands and they got too confident. Sports provides all kinds of possible narratives. And the best one keeps being the story of the impossible, the story of the underdog fighting back and winning.

Pittsburgh has its own story: It was built around three rivers, became a thriving center for the manufacture of steel, and attracted many immigrants to work the mills. Clashes between owners and laborers are part of its history, perhaps most notably the Homestead Steel Strike in which workers fought back when their wages were cut. It didn’t work. Management won. The Carnegies, the Fricks, the Mellons lived here and spun gold. Italians, Czechs, Poles, and others sought solace in neighborhoods that were like villages within the city. The neighborhoods still carry the marks of their founding in the churches, bars, and restaurants that survive. There is Italian Bloomfield and the eponymous Polish Hill.

When the steel business faltered and died, “the smoky city” reinvented itself as a white-collar urban site, fueled by its thriving universities. It had been a place so dark with pollution in the steel days that men carried clean shirts with them to work in order to change during the day. Now you can see the hills, the rivers, the rhythmic skyline — and as the cameras are fond of displaying at sports events, the city is now glittering and beautiful.

Anybody moving to Pittsburgh learns pretty quickly that it boasts affordable prime real estate, three beautiful rivers, parks and monuments, a flourishing university and cultural life, major medical centers, and tight neighborhoods. It’s been named more than once the most livable city in America. Young people who have grown up here get antsy, though, and move away. New residents who come in for a job or a school, surprised by what they find, often decide to stay. Former residents feel tugs of longing and move back. (Contributor Stewart O’Nan has moved back; contributor Hilary Masters is one of the people who discovered the city and stayed.)

What is Pittsburgh to noir and noir to Pittsburgh? We certainly have our rough streets and grisly murders. But dark crime stories depend on something in addition to killing. The best examples of the genre revolve around private moralities and private law; they are the stories of people pushing against real or imagined oppression. In Pittsburgh Noir, as in most of the novels and films that gave the genre its name, the real story is the dark underbelly of existence, the fear and guilt and rebellion and denial in regular people: the woman buying groceries, the man grilling hot dogs. Their secret lives.

I’d like to thank Mary Alice Gorman of Pittsburgh’s Mystery Lovers Bookstore for spurring me to jump into this project. And I’d like to thank the contributors who’ve joined me.

I’ve snagged a story from the legendary (and anonymous, Pynchon-style) K.C. Constantine, as well as from Shamus Award winner Tom Lipinski and the multiple award-winning poet Terrance Hayes, who shows he can do fiction too. I invited esteemed fiction writers Stewart O’Nan, Hilary Masters, and Reginald McKnight to turn to crime, and they did so with distinctive voices and dark humor. No Pittsburgh collection would be complete without Lila Shaara, Rebecca Drake, Nancy Martin, and Kathryn Miller Haines, all publishing mysteries regularly to critical acclaim. Three stories come from exciting new voices who push the boundaries of the genre: Paul Lee, Carlos Antonio Delgado, and Aubrey Hirsch.

We’ll take you to Bloomfield, the Mexican War Streets, Forest Hills, Fox Chapel, Schenley Farms, Carrick, McKees Rocks, Highland Park (a little-known unofficial marina), Wilkinsburg, East Liberty, Morningside, Squirrel Hill, Lawrenceville, and Homewood.

Here’s to the black and gold; to the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio; to Jonas Salk and Thomas Starzl; to Primanti’s sandwiches and churches that sell pierogies; to all and everything that makes up the ’burgh.

Kathleen George

Pittsburgh, PA

March 2011