A Taste of Noir includes four short stories from the collection Nice Girl Does Noir by award-winning crime fiction author Libby Fischer Hellmann. The stories in Taste, Volume 3 include:

'A Berlin Story'
This story first appeared in the SHOW BUSINESS IS MURDER anthology, edited by the late, great Stuart Kaminsky (Berkley Prime Crime, 2004). The time of World War Two has always resonated with me—I can't think of another period of history that has been fraught with such bitter conflict, such a clear demarcation between good and evil, or so many examples of heroism and cowardice. I still return there for inspiration. This story plumbs Berlin's cabaret culture of the early '30s: the desperate need to party, the hollowness of the frivolity, the sense of impending doom. To that end the story also pays homage to Christopher Isherwood, whose work captured that atmosphere perfectly.

'Dumber Than Dirt'
This story was first published in 2000 in Blue Murder Magazine, which has since disappeared. It was reprinted in Twilight Tales' Blood and Doughnuts, and most recently in the ONCE UPON A CRIME ANTHOLOGY edited by Gary Bush. An "only in Chicago" story, it's goofy and noir at the same time.

'The Last Radical'
In 1999 '70s radical Kathleen Soliah was arrested after spending 23 years under the alias of Sara Jane Olson. In 1975 she was charged with attempting to bomb police cars with the SLA, the group that kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst. But Olson vanished after she was charged and reinvented herself as a housewife - changing her name, marrying a doctor and becoming a mother of three in St. Paul, Minnesota. During that time she was active in the community and was known to be a progressive. I am old enough to remember her original crime, but what intrigued me was her life on the lam. Did she panic every time she saw a police car or heard a siren? How did she explain her youth to her husband and kids? How does someone with something to hide live? This story is the result of that curiosity. It was published in FUTURES Magazine in 2001.

'The Rainforest Messiah'
This was originally published in the WORLD WIDE WRITERS Magazine, (UK, November, 2000). It was republished in the webzine, Mysterical-E, in January 2001, and was voted one of the best five stories of that year. It was one of the first stories I wrote that wasn't set in Chicago.

Be sure to look for the three other Hellmann short story "4-packs." Each has a different Volume Number, from Volume 1 to Volume 4.

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