Santa Cruz Noir [Paperback]

Elizabeth McKenzie's The Big Creep has been named a finalist for the2019 Shamus Award for Best Private Eye Short Storypresented by the Private Eye Writers of America!

It's a thrilling, whip-smart book that will dazzle local lovers of crime fiction.
--Good Times Santa Cruz, Editor's Note

Santa Cruz is a place of natural beauty, ocean breezes and family-friendly tourist attractions. But a new collection of short fiction stories explores a seedier side of this beach town filled with murder and mystery.
--KAZU FM

Santa Cruz Noirdelivers on noir sensibilities with an extra twist: it's that California mythology...It is this noir ethos that definesSanta Cruz Noir. After arriving at California's golden shores, life surely will be better. There is no place further to go.
--Book Riot

Akashic's well-traveled, always-riveting Noir series has been to some serendipitous locales over the years, cities perfectly suited to crime fiction, some boasting a long noir tradition of their very own. But for me, just in terms of sheer allure and possibility, the new Santa Cruz collection is right up there at the top. A washed out seaside pleasure palace, nestled up against the hills and the surf, home to all manner of shady types and societal misfits, proximate to great wealth but possessed of an undeniable scruffiness, and above all, beautiful, with that low California sun so conducive to good noir.
--CrimeReads

Bright joins the ranks of Akashic editors to rip the lid off the California coastal town that's never seemed less laid-back.
--Kirkus Reviews

Santa Cruz Noiris teeming with other local details that will make readers do similar double takes. It's divided into three sections, the first of which is called 'Murder Capital of the World,' as if to put any question of when Santa Cruz's notorious serial killer lore is going to come up immediatelylÓ+