The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories: 4: Fourth Annual Collection by Ed Gorman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I rarely read short stories as I like to get my teeth into a good twisty plot. The stories in this book are too short for much of that. They are mainly about style. As such, it held a mixed bag – some good, some not so good. I read a half dozen of the of the 42 stories, enough to get a feel for the book, but not enough to give a fair review of most of them. My favorite was Cousin Rachel’s Uncle Murray because I really like Susan Isaacs’s witty and original style. It was handy at times to have something I could pick up and finish after the news and before dinner. The book holds a rich and varied selection for you to choose from, but in the end I can only give it three stars because most of the stories were rather predictable and too short to develop any real feel for the characters.