Oprah Magazine, NYT, Booklist reviews for BOSTON NOIR!

Last weekend was action packed with Crime Bake, but the action started off early for me. On Thursday, Lynne Heitman, Russ Aborn, and Brendan DuBois and I did readings from Boston Noir at the wonderful Newtonville Books. There was a super crowd (meaning they were plentiful and had great, thoughtful questions!) and lots of books to sign. Thanks, Mary, for a terrific event!



O, The Oprah Magazine features the Akashic Noir series in the “Reading Room.” It’s on page 192 in the December issue, the one with Ellen DeGeneres on the cover. I’ll wait while you go get it. You can see Boston Noir in the stack, right there in the middle, the light blue cover. So my story would be just about in the middle of that. I apologize to everyone I greeted at the hotel by thrusting the magazine under her nose instead of a hug and “hello.” But OMG! In O, with Akashic, right below Vladimir Nabokov.


Besides its starred review in Publishers Weekly, Boston Noir debuted at number four on the Boston Globe paperback bestseller list. Woohoo! There also was a super review in Booklist: “The stories…are uniformly solid, with characters, plots, and atmosphere that evoke the classic noirs of Cain, Woolrich, and Thompson.”

BN was reviewed by Marilyn Stasio in the New York Times Sunday Books section: “Dennis Lehane advises us not to judge the genre by its Hollywood images of sharp men in fedoras lighting cigarettes for femmes fatales standing in the dark alleys...[Lehane] writes persuasively of the gentrification that has...left people feeling crushed.”

And my story, “Femme Sole,” got a very nice notice in the review in PopMatters.com:

“Dana Cameron’s “Femme Sole” is another success, reaching back into the city’s colonial past to find a rich noir. Her protagonist, Anna Hoyt, is a North End tavern owner in the year 1795, struggling to maintain her independence while under siege from an abusive husband and local racketeers who do not recognize her rights on account of her gender. Cameron’s prose is well tailored and wastes no time bringing Anna to life. The strength and fullness of Anna’s character makes it easy to sympathize and identify with her, to feel invested in her fate.”

Finally, if you'd like to hear editor and contributor, Dennis Lehane and fellow contributors Russ Aborn, Brendan DuBois, Jim Fusilli, Lynne Heitman, and me reading from our short stories at the Boston Book Festival, you can get the podcast at the The Phoenix's blog.

I never thought I'd hear my work being described as "fucked-up dark-hearted shit" and be thrilled about it!