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Jump to navigationJump to searchThe Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10 by Maxim Jakubowski (view source)
Revision as of 09:23, 15 August 2020
, 09:23, 15 August 2020no edit summary
Even some of the stories which didn't work too well for me had some real potential. I wasn't keen on the plot of Lisa Tuttle's ''The Curious Affair of The Deodand'', but loved the pair of detectives it introduced, childlike Jasper Jesperson and new assistant Miss Lane, and would definitely read more featuring this duo. ''The King of Oudh's Curry'', by Amy Myers, was rather too predictable but still felt like a satisfying read and again, I'd look out for her work in the future.
Amongst these, though, there's are just too many stories which don't have any real strong points. Bland, predictable, and boring are words that could be used to describe about half of the stories in this collection - I found myself struggling not to skip over pages in many of them; worrying when barely any last over 20 pages. I'll also reiterate another criticism from last time - the lack of any biographical details seems bizarre in this day and age. Perhaps this is because it's easy enough to throw authors' names into an internet search engine, but a brief paragraph at the start of each story with a little bit about what else they'd written - or at the very least a link to a website or Twitter account or similar - would have been very welcome.
All in all, I'm struggling to recommend it particularly highly, but at an average cost of 20p a story, it's hard to suggest that it should be completely avoided. I think the six I mentioned above, along with Phil Lovesey's ''Stardust'' and Margaret Murphy's ''The Message'', are strong enough to make it at least a mild recommendation, but I'd really like to see a slightly less mammoth read next time around with a higher average quality of story.
For more crime shorts, the collections Lee Child has edited, [[Killer Year by Lee Child (Editor)|Killer Year]] and [[Vengeance by Lee Child (Editor)|Vengeance]] are both worth taking a look at. Jakubowski also translated [[Block 46 by Johana Gustawsson and Maxim Jakubowski (Translator)|Block 46 by Johana Gustawsson]].
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