07/15/2024
Horowitz (the Hawthorne and Horowitz series) matches the variety of his own output with the 20 stories he’s selected for the thrilling latest installment of the Mysterious Bookshop’s annual anthology series. There’s something here for most mystery lovers’ tastes, including a twisty serial killer tale (Victor Methos’s “Kill Night”), a fair-play whodunit (Michael Bracken’s “Beat the Clock”), and a Southern neo-noir (Ace Atkins’s “Stunts”). Most of the contributors—save Atkins and Jeffrey Deaver—are not household names. John Floyd impresses with “Last Day at the Jackrabbit,” which repeatedly subverts readers’ expectations as diner waitress Elsie Williams gets multiple unpleasant surprises after a patron bearing a sinister resemblance to Don Vito Corleone enters the restaurant. In “Kill Night,” by Victor Mathos, a man picks up a rain-drenched hitchhiker in Utah, only to learn that his passenger has just cut off a woman’s hands before burying her alive. Shelley Costa’s “The Knife Sharpener,” a tense story of betrayal set on the eve of the Battle of Gettysburg, is another standout. The wealth of talent on display here augurs well for the future of intelligent, character-driven crime fiction. This is a must for mystery fans. (Sept.)