Christmas
at The Mysterious BookShop
Edited by Otto Penzler
Otto
Penzler actually owns a a New York book store called The Mysterious
Bookshop. He also publishes mysteries. Both he and his bookstore
have been the subject of short stories for years. Mystery authors
like Lawrence Block, Thomas Cook, and Ed McBain have been commissioned
to write short mysteries mentioning the bookshop. Readers will find
the mysteries were written at the owner's expense - in more ways
than one.
Christmas
at The Mysterious Book Shop is very entertaining. The mysteries
are as diverse as the authors listed. Their inside knowledge of
the bookshop and owner is what makes this anthology a unique read.
Each story is well-written, some are written with humor, others
are serious, and one actually has the characters rhyming. But if
forced to pick favorites, mine would be Donald Westlake and Lawrence
Block. Their humor made me smile. Westlake's "Give 'Til it
Hurts" has a thief unexpectedly dropping in on a Mysterious
Bookshop poker game. Block's "As Dark as Christmas Gets"
has a PI solving the mystery of a missing manuscript from the BookShop.
After reading both, I can see why in the introduction Penzler mentions
the characters bearing his name in several of the stories are strictly
fictional.
You'd
be a fool to pass up this holiday package of mysteries...
The
publisher notes these authors as the contributors:
Charles
Ardai
Lisa Atkinson
George Baxt
Lawrence Block
Mary Higgins Clark
Thomas H. Cook
Ron Goulart
Jeremiah Healy
Edward D. Hoch
Rupert Holmes
Andrew Klavan
Michael Malone
Ed McBain
Anne Perry
S. J. Rozan
Jonathan Santlofer
Donald E. Westlake
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