A couple of days ago, I read a few stories from Damn Near Dead: An Anthology of Geezer Noir, edited by Dwayne Swierczynski, published by Busted Flush Press. The book was published in 2006, and all of the stories were first published in this anthology.
Each story is preceded by a short paragraph about the author, what he has written and other interesting facts. The stories also have an afterword from the author, from one paragraph to several, talking about the story and the author's motivation for writing it.
The stories are arranged in sections and the order is by birth year of the author. Thus the first section is made up of six authors born between 1970 and 1979. And the last section, which I read, was four stories by authors born between 1938 and 1947.
The stories I read are:
- "Encore" by Milton T. Burton (b. 1947)
- "Cranked" by Bill Crider (b. 1941)
- "The Deadsters" by Robert Ward (b. 1945)
- "Just Friends" by John Harvey (b. 1938)
My favorite story in that group was "Cranked" by Bill Crider. It was fairly short, about 10 pages in length in this edition.
The story is about an elderly man who escapes from a nursing home. He leaves with only $21 and he takes his daughter's car. Unfortunately the car is on empty so he has to go to a nearby truck stop for gas, and ends up getting involved with a woman who just walked out of a meth house, as it was blown up, and two men who attempt to rob the truck stop. It was a great story; I enjoyed the humor, and the ending was perfect. The story was nominated for the Edgar and Anthony awards and won the Derringer Award.
In the Afterword for this story, Crider explains that it was a follow-up to a previous story, titled "Raining Willie." I found a copy of that story but I have not read it yet.
I also liked the stories by Milton T. Burton and John Harvey. However, the story by Robert Ward did not appeal to me at all; it leaned very close to horror. It was clever but much too gross and macabre for me.
