Tag Archives: detective

The Year’s 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories (6th edition, 1996) edited by Joan Hess (1997) – BR00059 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
May 9 1999

Plot or Premise

A collection of the best stories from 1996.

What I Liked

Only seven stories are particularly memorable:

  • Robert J. Randisi: The Girl Who Talked To Horses — A Dick-Francis-type story involving murder in the stables with the horse framed for the murder. Great whodunnit, with a trap for the murderer, and all the explanations at the end. Cross between Francis and Christie.
  • S.J. Rozan: Hoops — Smith shows up investigating the death of a basketball player, the victim of an apparent murder-suicide after killing his pregnant girlfriend. His buddy doesn’t believe it and hires Smith to find out the real story. Suspects include a jealous ex-boyfriend with a future in basketball, numerous gang friends, a coach who helps them all, and even the dead kid since he was HIV positive. Another great story from Rozan. (4.5/5.0)
  • Monica Quill: Intent to Kill — A man plans the death of his wife but is surprised to find somebody beat him to it. Unfortunately, he is standing over the body when the cops arrive.
  • Sarah Shankman: Real Life — Clare is a script-writer for a top soap opera but she has been modelling her characters after her own life, and she was recently dumped by a man and she’s rather wimpy about it. During a stint as a prospective juror, she gets help from two other jurors to spice up the story and throw in a murder or two to get revenge through the TV on the ex-bf. A small twist at the end makes a nice ending.
  • Sara Paretsky: Publicity Stunts — A woman shock writer tries to hire Warshawski as a bodyguard but gets turned down. To get some publicity, the author gets a shock jock to attack V.I. on the air for her politics but when the woman gets killed, V.I. becomes suspect number one. Guess who has to find out who else had a motive to kill her?
  • Bill Pronzini: The Monster — A woman at home gets a bad vibe from a plumber and tries to keep him away from their children. Twist ending after a very short story.
  • Ruth Rendall: Clothes — An obsessive-compulsive shopper whose addiction is clothes. No real mystery to solve, nor crime until the end, but its obvious the story was written backwards from the crime at the end to explain the reasons leading up to it. Nicely done, with great character development.

Other so-so stories by Brendan Dubois (The Dark Snow — ex-CIA in retirement home); Lia Matera (Dead Drunk — someone’s killing the homeless); Ed McBain (Running from Legs — war hero and prohibition); Walter Satterthwait (Cassoulet — master chef and the girl who got away); John Lutz and David August (Toad Crossing — building a culvert for frogs); Maude Miller (The Last Word — three sisters, one not wanted); David Corn (My Murder — an author claims to have committed the perfect murder); James Grady (Kiss the Sky — inmate trying to stop a hit); Brett Simon (A Good Thing — a con of a wealthy Brit); Nancy Pickard (A Rock and a Hard Place — PI helping rape victim); and Donald Westlake (The Burglar and the Whatsit — burglar Santa helps drunk inventor).

What I Didn’t Like

Out of the 38 stories in the collection, there are three that are merely readable by Edward Hoch (The Narrow House — inexperienced woman starts grow-up in her house); Alan Russell (Married to a Murderer — socialite and a death-row inmate); and Reginald Hill (The Perfect Murder Club — people respond to ad in the newspaper about perfect murders). However, there are four more that are wastes of paper by Sam Pizzo (Wild Horses — Walter Mitty on the internet); Susan B. Kelly (Stalking Horse — undercover woman cop as a hitter); Anne Perry (The Escape — freedom fighters break out a criminal during French revolution); and Marcia Muller (The Cracks in the Sidewalk — novelist and an intriguing homeless woman).

The Bottom Line

Good collection of stories

The Edge by Dick Francis (1988) – BR00056 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
May 6 1999

Plot or Premise

An arrogant horse-owner in England joins The Great Transcontinental Mystery Race Train across Canada, with the train stopping at several sites along the way for horseraces, with an actors troupe on the train posing as real passengers.

What I Liked

Francis is a master at moving players around in the story and having them interact in interesting ways. His descriptive prose and his keep-it-simple style make it easy to both imagine the scene and understand the characters. The sports element is there, as it is in all of Francis’ books, but he again shows his mastery in leaving it as the backdrop against all the other characters’ interactions.

What I Didn’t Like

The overall feel of the book is similar to that of a play or film with an ensemble cast — no one is really well done, but most are sufficiently interesting to hold our attention for awhile. However, some characters are still left hiding in the background as mere caricatures. As for the villain and the protagonist, both needed to be better developed, and I never felt the villain was particularly evil nor the protagonist particularly interesting — too much on their actions and not enough of their thoughts to reveal their true character. Unfortunately, I also figured out the plot fairly early, although there was one character at the end who was slightly different than expected. I also saw three or four points in the story where Francis could have easily taken the reader down a darker or more interesting path, yet the opportunities were left abandoned alongside the tracks in the story.

The Bottom Line

Another good mystery from Francis.

Taxed to Death by Debra Purdy Kong (1995) – BR00089 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
February 7 1999

Plot or Premise

A tax auditor discovers fraud, revenge and murder.

What I Liked

The writing is pretty good and I love the premise of the protagonist (a Revenue Canada tax auditor).

What I Didn’t Like

I had difficulty with three things in the book. First, I found there were way too many characters to keep them all straight. Second, I didn’t like the relationship between Alex and Jillian, very hard to follow why this would be a romance that would “bloom”. Third, I just plain don’t like Jillian…the choices she makes, the rationale for her relationships and interactions with men, all of it made me feel like an accomplice to sexism. Altogether, it presented a challenge for realism, but it may also just be my personal preference to not read about a character like Jillian.

Disclosure

I am not personal friends with the author, but I have interacted with them briefly on social media.

The Bottom Line

Could have been better laid out with fewer characters.

Perilous Friends by Carole Epstein (1996) – BR00063 (1999) – 🐸⚪⚪⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
February 5 1999

Plot or Premise

Barbara Simons is a newly unemployed airline exec with nothing to do. Bored, she jumps at a chance to help her fabulous friends with their problems — an ex-husband hiding money or uncovering a smuggling ring.

What I Liked

Better written than Reichs’ books in the same setting, and the overall story is interesting.

What I Didn’t Like

I hated most of this book — every character is one of life’s beautiful people, all wealthy, all extremely ravishing or handsome, and all amazingly beautiful, perky, effective at turning men’s heads deliberately and/or accidentally, and supposedly downright nice…not nice enough that you like them, but Barbara obviously thinks everyone else does.

But Barbara isn’t any better — she’s supposed to be this amazing go-getter businesswoman but she has been wallowing in self-pity for six weeks. She goes to fancy parties with the elites, but can’t relate to the average guy behind the counter at the 7-11 without going off on some trip. And while the story is interesting, the ending feels like it wraps everything up in a whirlwind 3 pages.

Finally, a small spoiler, there is a small sub-plot that ends on a “to be continued” basis, kind of like Evanovich does regularly with the Stephanie Plum series. I hate that with a passion — I like some resolution, even if there is an ongoing storyline.

Disclosure

I was not personal friends with the author, but I did interact with her briefly on social media.

The Bottom Line

Hate the characters, okay story.

The Dead Pull Hitter by Alison Gordon (1988) – BR00061 (1999) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
February 3 1999

Plot or Premise

Dead Pull Hitter feels like it picks up where Gordon’s non-fiction left off: the Toronto Titans have finished in fourth place the previous year and are starting to pull it together for a pennant race; the protagonist Kate Henry is a woman sportswriter who’s covered them for five years; she works for the Toronto Planet which is sandwiched in the news market between the stodgy World and the bimbette-littered pages of the Mirror. At times it was hard to remind myself that this was the fiction category!

What I Liked

The fun doesn’t really take off until after the first body arrives. Up until then, it is basically a baseball story. After that, the murder mystery takes hold. The clues are there for the finding: some obvious, others more subtle. Nicely written, and combines the baseball storylines with an appropriate emphasis on the mystery. And the cop-as-a-romantic-partner and mystery-antagonist-theme is alive and well in the book.

What I Didn’t Like

The start on the baseball story gives you a fairly large cast of characters that may be easy for a baseball fan to keep straight (i.e. player X is a catcher), but the names all seemed to run together for me. The baseball players also seem to have an enormously large and direct role in Kate’s life, which doesn’t seem to fit with her being a member of the objective sports press that covers them regularly.

Disclosure

I was not personally friends with the author, but I did interact briefly with her online.

The Bottom Line

Nice start to the series