Praise for Sydney Noir and my short story ‘The Patternmaker’ in recent reviews:
- Ed Wright in the Australian: ‘Only Julie Koh’s wonderfully creepy femme fatale story really reaches into the opportunities for cosmopolitan noir in a city where one in three inhabitants was born in another country.’
- Chris Flynn in Australian Book Review: ‘This long-time fan of the series breathed a sigh of relief upon discovering that not only is Sydney Noir very good indeed, it is one of the best in Akashic’s canon for some time. … Julie Koh, who made a splash with her second short story collection, Portable Curiosities (2016), continues to embrace the role of literary-innovator-in-chief with ‘The Patternmaker’, in which a fashion designer’s obsession with a reality show tips her over the edge into insanity as she plans a sex/murder tryst in her grim studio.’
- Kirkus Reviews: ‘The former British penal colony provides fertile ground for dark doings, as these 14 tales demonstrate. … The stories [Dale’s] assembled offer ample variety in this cavalcade of crime Down Under.’
- Publishers Weekly: ‘Sydney is a good choice for Akashic’s first noir anthology set in Australia … The 14 uniformly strong selections feature familiar subgenre figures: gangsters, ethically compromised cops, and people bent on revenge for the loss of a loved one … Fans of dark crime fiction will want to seek out other works by these contributors, most of whom will be unfamiliar to American readers.’
