Revenge: A Noir Anthology About Getting Even

Douglas Barbour is a professor of English at the University of Alberta.
He is the author of Lyric/anti-lyric : Essays on Contemporary Poetry,
Breath Takes, and Fragmenting Body Etc.

Editors Schooley and Sellers have gathered a nifty cache of tales
together, full of the requisite black comedy, violence, and, especially,
feelings of vengeance satisfied. On the whole, the 12 stories go about
their nervy adventures with an understated sense of bleakness, although
at least one, Vern Smith’s “The Green Ghetto,” goes the other way,
having a ball overdoing the slang and the many sudden shifts of power
among the cops, dancers, and growers. There’s a story about an old
man, whose twin brother stole his name and his girl just after World War
II, and who has come, with his walker and a gun, to finally get
even—which he does, but not quite as expected. There’s one about an
aging, and rather frightened, hockey player who comes through in the
end—but more for his friend’s dog than for his friend.

One story is narrated by the person against whom revenge is taken, and
there, memory and loss play an effective part. The final story, Jas R.
Petrin’s “Man on the Roof,” makes for a perfect conclusion to a
collection in which almost every tale depends on a neatly devised
surprise ending. Revenge has all the emotional power one could ask for,
and a terrific sense of terror as well. It gives readers just what it
advertises, and is an entertaining way to spend an evening.