Doing a bit of genre-related research, I recently revisited BAMS 2002 and 2003. As might be expected, both anthologies are mixed bags. The best of these crime/mystery stories offer a refreshing contrast to the stories of, say, Annie Proulx or Donald Ray Pollack — they portray toughness and despai...
I had always heard that Ed McBain could craft a good story; FIDDLERS was my introduction to his style. To be honest, when I first started reading this book, I was unsure about it. There seemed to be too many things going on, too many characters. The initial plot, a serial (I would say mass mur...
Although Cook's works tend to be too retrospective for my taste, it works for this book. In between chapters, the main character (David) is trying to explain his situation. Each chapter is a narration on what's going on in David's life, but the entire book is plagued by flashbacks of his childhoo...
Average ratings of John Shannon's Jack Liffey series are rather low and no wonder - these are not your typical mystery novels. Usually, readers of mysteries go for the plot and rate books by intricacy, twistedness, speed, and unpredictability of the stories. Mr. Shannon. instead, is a sort of a m...
Original stories include: Terrible Tommy Terhune by Lawrence Block Tennis Anyone by Kinky Freeman Six Love by James W. Hall Promise by John Harvey A Debt to the Devil by Jeremiah Healy Stephen Longacre's Greatest Match by Stephen Hunter No Strings by Judith Kelman A Killer Overhead by Robert Leuc...