The only disappointment? Those introductory essays, most of them little more than graded lists of the year’s crime fiction...
For their second installment of the series that began last year, veteran anthologists Gorman and Greenberg have pulled out all the stops in an ambitious attempt to produce the definitive yearbook of the short mystery. The 41 stories, all first published within the past year, are bookended by eight introductory essays surveying crime fiction in 2000 and Pete Hamill’s New Yorker salute to Ed McBain. The taboo against duplicate stories by the same authors has been lifted, allowing two apiece for the richly deserving Jan Burke, Mat Coward, Brendan DuBois, Edward D. Hoch, Clark Howard, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Unlike the rival Houghton Mifflin series, edited this year by Lawrence Block (p. 1164), which seeks out new voices on the genre’s cutting edge, Gorman and Greenberg keep generally within its conventional boundaries, and the contributors here (most of them, despite the title’s global aspirations, American or British) are an honor roll of familiar names: Doug Allyn, Robert Barnard, Joseph Hansen, Gillian Linscott, Stuart M. Kaminsky, Peter Lovesey, John Lutz, Ed McBain, Joyce Carol Oates, Nancy Pickard, Bill Pronzini, Peter Robinson, S.J. Rozan, Donald E. Westlake, and, yes, Lawrence Block. The stories range in quality from above average to superb; indeed the biggest mystery is how a single year could have produced a bumper crop of so many outstanding tales.
The only disappointment? Those introductory essays, most of them little more than graded lists of the year’s crime fiction from Canada, Australia, Germany, and the UK. How about skipping them next year and including one of editor Gorman’s peerless stories instead?Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-765-30029-X
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2001
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.
Too much free time leads a New Hampshire bookseller into yet another case of murder.
Now that Tricia Miles has Pixie Poe and Mr. Everett practically running her bookstore, Haven’t Got a Clue, she finds herself at loose ends. Her wealthy sister, Angelica, who in the guise of Nigela Ricita has invested heavily in making Stoneham a bookish tourist attraction, is entering the amateur competition for the Great Booktown Bake-Off. So Tricia, who’s recently taken up baking as a hobby, decides to join her and spends a lot of time looking for the perfect cupcake recipe. A visit to another bookstore leaves Tricia witnessing a nasty argument between owner Joyce Widman and next-door neighbor Vera Olson over the trimming of tree branches that hang over Joyce’s yard—also overheard by new town police officer Cindy Pearson. After Tricia accepts Joyce’s offer of some produce from her garden, they find Vera skewered by a pitchfork, and when Police Chief Grant Baker arrives, Joyce is his obvious suspect. Ever since Tricia moved to Stoneham, the homicide rate has skyrocketed (Poisoned Pages, 2018, etc.), and her history with Baker is fraught. She’s also become suspicious about the activities at Pets-A-Plenty, the animal shelter where Vera was a dedicated volunteer. Tricia’s offered her expertise to the board, but president Toby Kingston has been less than welcoming. With nothing but baking on her calendar, Tricia has plenty of time to investigate both the murder and her vague suspicions about the shelter. Plenty of small-town friendships and rivalries emerge in her quest for the truth.
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0272-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
A murder is committed in a stalled transcontinental train in the Balkans, and every passenger has a watertight alibi. But Hercule Poirot finds a way.
**Note: This classic Agatha Christie mystery was originally published in England as Murder on the Orient Express, but in the United States as Murder in the Calais Coach. Kirkus reviewed the book in 1934 under the original US title, but we changed the title in our database to the now recognizable title Murder on the Orient Express. This is the only name now known for the book. The reason the US publisher, Dodd Mead, did not use the UK title in 1934 was to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel, Orient Express.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1934
ISBN: 978-0062073495
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1934
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