Brand-new stories by: Susan Straight, Robert S. Levinson, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, Dan Duling, Mary Castillo, Dick Lochte, Robert Ward, Gary Phillips, Gordon McAlpine, Martin J. Smith, and others; with a foreword by T. Jefferson Parker.Orange County, California, brings to mind the endless summer of sand and surf, McMansion housing tracts, a conservative stronghold, tony shopping centers where pilates classes are run like boot camp and real-estate values are discussed at your weekly colonic, and ice-cream parlors on Main Street, U.S.A., exist side-by-side with pho shops and taquerias. Orange County Noir takes you for a hardboiled tour behind the Orange Curtain where a reclusive rock star has lived way too long in his own head, a crooked judge uses the court for illicit means, a cab driver prowls the streets with more than the ticking meter on his mind, where cultures clash, housewives want more than the perfect grout cleaner, and nobody is who they seem to be.