About book The Collected Stories Of Amanda Cross (1998)
I read these mainly because I had come to the end of all my Cross books (except for the very odd penultimate one), and was sad to have done so. In that context each story was a delight, a little like eating a very small box of very fine chocolates. I don't know what someone might make of these stories if they (the person not the stories) were not very familiar with Kate and her author. As Cross/Heilbrun says herself in her own introduction to the book, I don't typically read detective short stories unless 'an author's longer works have captured my attention, when I find I like a certain author's style of writing, and, most compellingly, when my interest in her or his detective urges me to search out more adventures in that fictional life.' The writing is clear yet elegant; there are very few actual murders. Most of the stories are charming little puzzles. I don't know how easy they are to figure out while reading as I am terrible at that sort of thing and dislike doing it. I hear the same bass note of sorrow in these that I do when reading the novels -- not from the stories themselves, but the knowledge of how Heilbrun ended her own life. That note sounds more clearly in the stories than those novels because they are even briefer, and even more enchanting, the way the cheerful light of a candle flame makes the darkness around it even deeper.
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