MURDER IN THE FAMILY

Anybody who buys the anthologies produced by the distinguished friends who share a monthly dinner (Murder Among Friends, 2000, etc.) for the stories’ faithfulness to the announced topic will wonder how, broad as the topic is this time, it can be stretched to include Stanley Cohen’s anecdote of a john whose gesture of kindness to a prostitute goes wrong. But if it’s big names, not thematic consistency, you’re after, the dozen bylines here deliver, with authors like Lawrence Block (the one reprint, a reminiscence from Scudder’s days with the NYPD), Mary Higgins Clark (a damsel-in-distresser that reads like a miniature Clark novel), Dorothy Salisbury Davis (a mysterious letter that splits a family apart), Susan Isaacs (an amusing, meandering attempt to fit the right family member for prison duds after a domestic homicide), Warren Murphy (a short-tempered professor tangles with his battleaxe of a mother), and Whitley Strieber (the problems that face a cuckolded husband after his wife kills him). Mickey Friedman shows that two is too many to tango; Judith Kelman pits a brother and sister in a clever, lethal competition for the family firm; Peter Straub provides a mock-serious exposé of cartoon animals in Hollywood that will give Disney’s lawyers fits; Justin Scott offers a more somber take on cats and dogs; and Joyce Harrington spins out the longest tale here by making the key witness to his mother’s murder as mentally challenged as he’s gentle and cooperative.

No standouts, despite the starry cast of contributors, but no real disappointments either.