Edge City, from the author of Low Bite, takes place in an every-noir-city (a thinly veiled portrait of San Francisco’s North Beach) and its newest resident is Reno, an angry fledgling just hatched out of prison. Getting out is like a weird dream, and the streets of the City are a muddle of sensations pooling around her.
First there’s the bustle—everybody busy with mysterious businesses—an amplifying racket of choices. Staggering out onto the late night streets of the City, Reno ends up at the infamous Istanbul Club: dim lights, Arabic music and the sensual Su’ad dancing. Music, booze, babes and drugs: what more could a felonious girl want?
She encounters Huntington, the poisonous charmer who lives above the Club—perverse and powerful in the way only the wealthy can be. Eddie, the underage bartender, is happy to chemically enhance every waking moment. Slowmotion, the sound light technician, huge and darkly mysterious, has connections to people and places that Reno didn’t even know exist. Slowmotion’s elegant friend, Poppy, offers mental transport to realms beyond Xanadu; in her little valise there’s everything necessary for any trip, including the hallucinogenic “Teeth of Idi Amin.”
The owner of the club, handsome gambler Sinclair, hires Reno to waitress. Grumbling, drinking, snarling and swearing, Reno bangs her way through everyone else’s complicated plans, entangling herself in a byzantine labyrinth of betrayal, revenge, general mayhem, and yes, good times.
What People Are Saying
“Brilliant…Edge City is truly an extraordinary book in every way: story, people, atmosphere, writing.” —Hubert Selby, Jr., author of Last Exit to Brooklyn
“Sin Soracco cooks! Her writing is beyond hip—it struts and whistles down the last dark mile. Edge City, like her Low Bite, is the bad girl’s version of Mean Streets, an unbeatable double-feature for the fearless.” —Barry Gifford, author of Wild at Heart
“Dark and sultry . . . an illuminating view of hell as a nightclub that never closes.” —New York Times
“Meandering through pools of booze and moments of tawdry sex and petty larceny, Soracco's dense, bravura narrative is a triumph of (hard-boiled) style.” —Library Journal
“There are a number of writers today who are using the noir genre in creative and original ways, but there are fewer who have a truly original voice. Sin Soracco’s Edge City is one of those rare originals.” —Glenn Harper, International Noir blog
About Sin Soracco
Sin Soracco lives mostly in the Mission District of San Francisco and along the outer edges of madness on the Lower Russian River in Sonoma County, California.