Penzler Pick, February 2002: To the casual observer, it might seem that editing an anthology is a great gig. After all, you essentially get to put your name on a book that other people have written! But an anthology is very much like a paella: it's easy to make one, it's just hard to make a good one. Jeffery Deaver has made a good one. The key to outstanding anthologies is to get good writers, good stories, and the proper mix of classics (the predictable) and discoveries (the unpredictable).
As you might expect from a suspense anthology, one of Deaver's own stories, "The Weekender," is included, and it's one of the high spots of the book. The major ingredient of a suspense story should be... well, suspense. Commonly nowadays, if a story or book isn't a pure genre detective story, it's called "suspense," but in fact it may have no more white-knuckle, heart-pounding, sweat-inducing suspense than a Harlequin romance. Deaver delivers it in this story, as he does in his novels.
Stephen King's "Quitters, Inc." is one of the great classics of suspense, and it's here. We can only wonder which story by Patricia Highsmith, one of the greatest of all suspense writers, would have been in the book. Though she is listed on the dust jacket, no trace of her work can be found in the text. The dust jacket's promise of Reginald Hill is also, alas, unfulfilled.
There are many superb stories here that ultimately fail to deliver on the suspense front. The detective stories of Ellery Queen, for example, represented here by "The Adventure of the Dauphin's Doll," are long on excellent detective plotting but pretty short on nail-biting. The same is true for Michael Malone's brilliant, Edgar-winning masterpiece, "Red Clay," and Rex Stout's wonderful "Fourth of July Picnic." A bad idea in assembling an anthology is to use a "big name" just for the sake of having his work in the book, and that is the case with "Chee's Witch" by Tony Hillerman, one of America's most distinguished mystery novelists, who has admitted that he can't write short stories and proves it with this weak example.
As an anthologist myself, I find it almost irresistible to point out stories that should have been included but weren't, most notably the best pure suspense story of the past decade, Brendan DuBois's "The Dark Snow," and certainly something by the greatest suspense writer of the 20th century, Cornell Woolrich.
Still, this excellent collection is worthwhile because it's chock full of terrific mystery fiction, even if the level of suspense leaves a bit to be desired. --Otto Penzler
From Publishers Weekly
Rex Stout, Ellery Queen, Mickey Spillane, Lisa Scottoline and Stephen King are just a few of the talents included in A Century of Great Suspense Stories, edited by Jeffery Deaver (The Bone Collector). These 36 stories, originally published in the likes of Black Mask and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, will delight mystery lovers. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
New York Times bestselling author Jeffery Deaver's enviable task? Choose the best mystery/horror detective stories from a century of work by the world's most celebrated writers. The result is a triumph, featuring masterpieces of suspense by:
Robert Bernard * Robert Bloch * Lawrence Block * Anthony Boucher * Frederic Brown * James M. Cain * Max Allan Collins * Jeffery Deaver * Stanley Ellin * Harlan Ellison * Erle Stanley Gardner * Ed Gorman * Anna Katharine Green * Jeremiah Healy * Patricia Highsmith * Reginald Hill * Tony Hillerman * Evan Hunter * Stephen King * John Lutz * John D. MacDonald * Ross MacDonald * Michael Malone * Steve Martini * Sharyn McCrumb * Margaret Millar * Marcia Muller * Sara Paretsky * Bill Pronzini * Ellery Queen * Ruth Rendell * Lisa Scottoline * Georges Simenon * Mickey Spillane * Rex Stout * Janwillem van de Wetering * Donald E. Westlake
Century of Great Suspense Stories FROM THE PUBLISHER
New York Times bestselling author Jeffery Deaver's task was to select the best mystery/horror/detective stories of the century by the world's most celebrated writers. The result is a triumph, featuring masterpieces of suspense by:
*Robert Bloch *Lawrence Block *Anthony Boucher *Frederic Brown *;James M. Cain *Max Allan Collins *Jeffery Deaver *Stanley Ellin *Harlan Ellison *Erle Stanley Gardner *Ed Gorman *Patricia Highsmith *Reginald Hill *Tony Hillerman *Evan Hunter *Stephen King *John D. MacDonald *Ed McBain *Sharyn McCrumb *Ruth Rendell *Sara Paretsky *Georges Simenon *Mickey Spillane *Donald E. Westlake *Robert Barnard *Anna Katharine Green *Jeremiah Healy *John Lutz *Ross MacDonald *Michael Malone *Steve Martini *Margaret Millar *Marcia Muller *Bill Pronzini *Ellery Queen *Lisa Scottoline *Rex Stout *Janwillem van de Wetering
Author Biography: Jeffery Deaver is the New York Times bestselling author of nineteen suspense novels, including The Blue Nowhere and The Bone Collector. He has been nominated for three Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America and is a two-time recipient of the Ellery Queen Readers Award for Best Short Story of the Year.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Rex Stout, Ellery Queen, Mickey Spillane, Lisa Scottoline and Stephen King are just a few of the talents included in A Century of Great Suspense Stories, edited by Jeffery Deaver (The Bone Collector). These 36 stories, originally published in the likes of Black Mask and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, will delight mystery lovers. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
KLIATT - Janice Bees
Suspense, mystery, and horror lovers will appreciate this thick paperback chock full of suspense stories by authors such as Ellery Queen, Sara Paretsky, Mickey Spillane, and Rex Stout. Jeffery Deaver, author of The Bone Collector, edited the collection of 36 tales, which had been originally published in various mystery magazines. Brilliant examples of classic tough-talking rat-a-tat suspense writing are found in entertaining stories such as Fredric Brown's "The Wench is Dead" and James M. Cain's "Cigarette Girl." I must admit, I am not a fan of the suspense stories containing hard-boiled private eyes and dames with gorgeous gams up to their neck, so I was very surprised and pleased with the range of plots and writing styles of the selections. I particularly liked Stephen King's "Quitters, Inc.," in which a man unwittingly hires a mobster's help in quitting smokingﾽwith potentially deadly results. Sharyn McCrumb's "Among My Souvenirs" is a surprisingly poignant tale of a tired, fading cocktail waitress who meets her former teenaged idol, Devlin Robey, an aging heartthrob singer who needs to pay off some gambling debts, quickly. Deaver also includes one of his own stories in the collection, "The Weekender," a well-crafted story about a robbery gone wrong, and how the robbers' hostage, a salesman, tries to sweet-talk his way out of the situation. Many of these stories are well written and entertaining, but (not surprisingly!) there are themes of sex and violence throughout this book. It is interesting to note that stories by two of the authors on the front cover, Reginald Hill and Patricia Highsmith, are nowhere to be found in this volume. I would recommend this book to fans of suspense,horror, and mysteries; a few of the stories may even be of interest to people who don't care for those genres. KLIATT Codes: SAﾽRecommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2001, Berkley, 590p.,
Kirkus Reviews
This latest anvil-weight anthology of 36 stories, all but 5 from the last half-century, is both perfectly fine and deeply flawed. The stories themselves are largely top-drawer, with chestnuts like Ross Macdonald's "Guilt-Edged Blonde," Stephen King's "Quitters, Inc.," Margaret Millar's "The People Across the Canyon," and Tony Hillerman's "Chee's Witch" alternating with discoveries from Anthony Boucher (a sensible young woman marries on obvious wife-killer), John D. MacDonald (a tired sheriff faces down a lynch mob), and Georges Simenon (a rare locked-room puzzle), and the occasional brand-name clunker like Ellery Queen's "The Dauphin's Doll," Mickey Spillane's "The Girl Behind the Hedge," and Rex Stout's "Fourth of July Picnic." Apart from the surprising omission of Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler, the real problem here is tipped off by the title. You'd think that Deaver, a moderately successful mystery novelist who became a phenomenally successful suspense novelist (The Blue Nowhere, p. 276, etc.), would know the difference between mystery and suspense, but there's no evidence here that he does. His brief introduction never touches on the distinctive nature of suspense, and many of the best stories here-Robert Barnard's "The Gentleman in the Lake," Sara Paretsky's "Heartbreak House," Lisa Scottoline's "Carrying Concealed"-though models of their kind, are a long way from the suspense genre. Lawrence Block, Fredric Brown, James M. Cain, Stanley Ellin, Harlan Ellison, Ed Gorman, Michael Malone, Ed McBain, Marcia Muller, Ruth Rendell, and Donald E. Westlake may help salve your disappointment. A fair enough ragbag, if you don't take that title tooseriously.
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