columbus noir

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies with Columbus Noir, a collection edited by Andrew Welsh-Huggins, featuring 14 brand new stories from acclaimed local authors.

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Today, Columbus is an epicenter of the opioid epidemic, awash in heroin and the even deadlier fentanyl as dealers flood the city with their wares. More than five hundred people died of fatal overdoses in central Ohio in 2017, a nearly 50 percent increase from the year before. On the streets, homicide rates have soared, with 143 deaths in 2017, surpassing a record set in 1991—old Columbus, remember?—at the height of the crack cocaine epidemic. The wealth gap in the city is growing, and Columbus is now one of the deadliest places in the state for babies trying to make it to their first birthday, even more so if their mothers are African American. These days, Columbus is a place forensic investigators are moving to. Overdoses, homicides, infant mortality: it took awhile, but we’re finally as lethal as any big American city.

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