No One Hears The Last Shot by Lavie Tidhar

I would like to thank PS Publishing for a copy of this collection in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – PS Publishing

Published – Out Now

Price – £14.99 paperback

A middle-aged hitwoman goes on the run from the Israeli mob; a boy on a South Pacific island searches for a missing cat and uncovers dark secrets; an ageing bagman has to recover a package across one violent night, no matter the cost; an informer must uncover the heist of a lifetime on the fringes of the Roman Empire, and Sherlock Holmes is faced with a confounding botanical mystery; while a pair of hapless actors are forced into a seedy mystery in Golden Age Hollywood.

Moving from the genteel English countryside to the mean streets of L.A. and from the islands of Vanuatu to the dark alleyways of Tel Aviv, this wide-ranging collection gathers together the best crime and noir stories of master storyteller Lavie Tidhar, including the CWA Dagger Award nominated “Bag Man” and much more besides.

Welcome to a world of gangsters and hired killers, of lost romantics and deadly women, of good times and low lifes. Where it’s always the wrong part of town, and where whatever you do, there are no good choices.

Because when it comes, no one hears the last shot . . .

In the crime noir novel, we rarely are fully on the side of the angels. We meet the people we would not like to see on our doorstep. The kind of people who are more likely to sacrifice us to escape than themselves. But it is where we get to try and understand the darker side of human nature – what made these choices. Now in Lavie Tidhar’s incentive collection No One Hears The Last Shot we meet a series of dangerous people having to make hard choices and delivering a compelling read in the process.

We start with a fascinating tale ‘The Bell’ where women discuss guns in changing rooms in an Israeli city. But we soon realise we should have been focusing on Deborah a middle aged quite invisible woman who also happens to be a hitman for a major crim boss. Tidhar skips back to how Deborah decided to get involved with criminals and is a fascinating way to see how someone very ordinary can slip into crime and find they actually enjoy it. As always though we see there is a price, and the finale has a battel of skilled gunslinger which drives the tension all the way to the last page.

Then we jump back in time to ancient Israel in ‘The Temple’s Coin’ King Herod is building a new temple and some enterprising thieved have just stolen a very important chest of coin. Enter Josephus form roman soldier, fighter and informer hired to find the thieves and the gold. It is historical crime spin on the heist gone wrong and Josephus being very amiable, earthy and witty take on the noir detective is getting puzzled at the pile of death he is finding. Very action packed and had a very good resolution to what is actually going on.

Reading ‘Bag Man’ we recognise that the lead character Max also featured in ‘The Bell’ here he narrates the tale of a night when he is unexpectedly attacked by some low level streek punks. This was an error on their half as Max is elderly, he is also a very accomplished senior figure in the underworld and stealing his boss’ package isn’t something he can allow. I really liked the way we like Max as he gets his point of view and then Tidhar makes us see the teeth and this rematch is going to very one-sided. An uncomfortable ending awaits.

The enigmatically titled ‘Red Rising Hood’ is a tale that starts with our two characters just carrying out a standard executioner. But a young man is in the wrong place at the wrong time and becomes a witness. This is not great for everyone. Tidhar makes us see our gunmen’s side of life and why they are not going to let this rest. Bad decisions lead to murky betrayals, and the tale ends incredibly soberly and one person’s happy endings is not everyone’s.

Off to Baker Street with Holmes and Watson starring in ‘The Adventure of The Milford Silkworms’. It’s a deliciously weird little adventure involving silkworms, Darwin’s theories and goats. It comes together really well, and the footnotes are equally worth a read as they attempt to make the story fit into the wider canon and history of the period. But stay for the goats!

A grimmer tale awaits in ‘Hava’ where we meet a desperate woman with a secret. How far do you got to protect the little comfort you have? This is a tale where horrible things happen lore out of casual selfishness than evil which makes what we see and the self-justification for it even worse.

Something a little more surreal takes place in ‘The Last Romantics’ where we meet Peter Lorre and Syndney Greenstreet in the golden age of Hollywood. Fresh from the Maltese Falcon’s success they now find themselves hired by a gangster to find a man. The Hollywood heavies who aren’t actually heavies makes or a strange but compelling tale dropping in lots of little snippets of these two men’s lives and their futures and yet neatly fits the noir tales to come.

There is an epic revenge tale awaiting in ‘The Mystery of baby X’ as a series of men across the world seem to be targeted by an inventive assassin. Tidhar soon pulls the pieces together and the tale has great pace and variety with a sense that things still can go wrong at any point in time. The different locations and disguises used all neatly match a tragic crime responsible for all we witness.

If you enjoy your crime on the darker side, then No One Hears The Last Shot will deliver gritty tales with both variety and a huge sense of style. A really engaging collection well worth picking up and highly recommended!