ONCE UPON A CRIME

Most fairy tales are already so full of innocent victims, monstrous malefactors, and sudden violence that it doesn’t take much of a push to send them over the edge into the realm of crime fiction, as in this overstuffed collection of 24 brand-new stories. Some of the authors go it straight, changing only the milieu of Rapunzel (Brendan DuBois’s imprisoned computer programmer), Hansel and Gretel (Janet Dawson’s L.A. street kids), the Snow Queen (Sharyn McCrumb’s cocaine-addicted Kay), the Brave Little Tailor (Les Roberts’s costume designer), or the Twelve Dancing Princesses (Anne Wingate’s Mafia daughters). Bill Crider enters a plea on behalf of Red Riding Hood’s wolf, and Gillian Roberts and William L. DeAndrea ask what happens after happily ever after. The more adventurous entries range farther afield. Joan Hess’s Snow White carries the Seven Dwarfs in her head as multiple personalities; Elizabeth Engstorm’s Hansel and Gretel fall prey to a fiendishly cold-blooded kidnaping scheme; Jane Haddam reimagines Rapunzel as sordidly compelling pathology; and co-editor Gorman turns “Gossip Wolf and the Fox” into a vintage small-town nightmare. Jon L. Breen, Simon Clark, Mat Coward, Gary A. Braunbeck, Edward D. Hoch, John Lutz, John Helfers, Simon Brett, Peter Crowther, Audrey Peterson, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and Doug Allyn round out a circle whose provocative concept makes it more satisfying as a whole than in any particular story.