Palm Springs Noir
Available now wherever you buy books, including:
Amazon
Bookshop
Scribd (Audiobook).
“As the 14 stories in DeMarco-Barrett’s fine noir anthology set in Palm Springs, Calif., and vicinity show, swimming pools are meant for more than leisurely dips, and Frank Sinatra songs are an ever-present soundtrack to the desert landscape of abandoned dreams and broken hearts … It’s rare to find a group of stories without a bad one, but DeMarco-Barrett has chosen well and there’s not a dud in the bunch.”
— Publisher’s Weekly
“In Los Angeles, the rich don’t know the names of their pool “boys,” but in Palm Springs those men have a past, a motive and a weapon — the pool itself. The well-off and the working class sometimes form a tenuous alliance, as in DeMarco-Barrett’s “The Water Holds You Still.” Several characters are trying their best, or worst, to exit the ranks of the working poor … For all the playfulness of the genre and the location, the wisecracks and the kidney-shaped pools, there is an unmanageable darkness waiting to seep in, like so much blood in the pool water.”
—Margaret Wappler, Los Angeles Times
“Brilliantly conceived, DeMarco-Barrett and the other contributing authors effortlessly transport the reader to the edgy, moody, and sleazier side of one of Southern California’s most renowned and iconic locales. A sure thing bestseller and a must-have summer read, Palm Springs Noir unquestionably brings the heat. Bravo!”
—Michael Thomas Barry, New York Journal of Books
“As editor DeMarco-Barrett points out, it’s hard to think “noir” in a landscape that offers 300 days of sunshine a year. But unrelenting heat and light can do funny things to your brain. An engaging mix of the good, the bad, and the off-kilter.”
—Kirkus
Reviews
- Publisher’s Weekly
- Kirkus
- Palm Springs Desert Sun
- New York Journal of Books
- Los Angeles Times
- Mystery Scene
- LGBTSR
- Coachella Valley Independent
- Bookchase
- Alta
- Reviewing the Evidence
- Beverly in Movieland
- Point Blank: Hardboiled, Noir, & Detective Fiction
Features/Interviews
- Palm Springs Life
- Los Angeles Review of Books
- Orange County Register: Bookish
- CrimeReads
- Authors Guild
- Stu News Newport
Videos/Coverage
Coolest American Stories 2022
Released January 12, 2022, with my story, “Blue Martini”

– Washington Independent Review of Books