Carnival of the Criminal Minds, the XX-rated edition

The Carnival of the Criminal Minds pulls into southwestern Minnesota, hosted at its twentieth stop by Anthony Neil Smith's Crime Dog One: The Virtual Dive Bar. It's a stop with a difference. Says Mr. Smith:

"Since most sideshows are visually oriented, you'll see a lot of video here.

"So, what exactly is on my mind? Biker pulp, grind-house, Pentecostals, war comics, Minnesota, `transgressive' fiction, and High School Satanists. I can't talk about all of that (some of it deals with the novel I'm currently writing), but on we go into the unlocked passageways of the Freakshow."

Smith is an author, which means he offers not just a guide to some of the more useful and intriguing sites on the dark side of crime fiction, but also some thoughts on genre itself, on noir, on crime fiction and on "transgressive" fiction. (He uses the inverted commas himself; I'm not making fun of him.)

As always, visit Barbara Fister's Carnival archives for summaries of and links to all previous carnivals.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008