But then, for you the reader of this anthology, London will mean many other things, all different.

And you there, yes, you the wondrous tall lady standing quietly at the back with her mass of tangled hair, London might well be another set of images and memories altogether. Hotel rooms near Heathrow or West End basements maybe?

I suppose that’s the way of fascinating cities, to grip, charm and inspire us.

Somehow, most noir writing automatically brings America and its legendary dark side to mind: the rainy mean streets of night-time California in the pages of Raymond Chandler or James Ellroy’s hell-pit of Los Angeles, mafia hoods in New York’s Little Italy, countless road movies or gangster flicks full of fury and despair. But London also enjoys its share of gloom, doom and heart-break. Here, people live, suffer and love in their own idiosyncratic ways too. Think of such eminent London writers as Gerald Kersh, Patrick Hamilton, a certain Dickens and, today, Michael Moorcock, Peter Ackroyd, Iain Sinclair, Derek Raymond.

Well, Whitechapel did spawn Jack the Ripper Esquire after all!

So I thought I would ask several friends and writers each to pen a new story about the darkness they saw at the heart of our contradictory city. The responses, collected here, are both varied and fascinating, and provide us with a patchwork portrait of a London we never knew, a dark London, a London Noir.

Often a very bleak view, I am aware, but then urban nightmares must always have a silver lining, and lancing a boil can have beneficial effects in the long run.

London, this is your other life.

Maxim Jakubowski

CONTRIBUTORS

CHRISTOPHER FOWLER is one of the leading British contemporary horror writers. He runs a film promotional company in London’s Soho. Amongst his novels are Roofworld, Red Bride, Darkest Day and Rune (currently being developed for the screen by Basic Instinct’s Paul Verhoeven with a script by Paul Mayersberg of Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence).