Книги автора Howard Clark

Harrowing tales of mayhem, murder versus moonshine acting as counter irritants and prescribed by spine-tingling specialists chosen for you this month by the MASTER OF SUSPENSE

The best-selling mystery writer Lawrence Block proves his point with the twenty outstanding stories he has chosen for this volume. For fans of the traditional mystery, there’s T. Jefferson Parker’s “Easy Street,” in which a brother’s visit uncovers family secrets. In Jeremiah Healy’s “A Book of Kells,” a detective draws on his Irish heritage to solve a crime. And in Clark Howard’s “Under Suspicion,” a detective’s investigation of the murder of his best friend’s daughter hits too close to home.

However, many of the stories are concerned more with the personalities and motives surrounding the crime than with the crime itself. In Joyce Carol Oates’s “The Girl with the Blackened Eye,” we see a crime from the young victim’s point of view. Jennifer Anderson’s “Things That Make Your Heart Beat Faster” examines the hardships one rookie cop endures while solving her first crime. And in Thomas Lynch’s “Blood Sport,” a young mortician faces the gruesome job of preparing a murdered friend for her funeral.

As Block says: “Three things struck me about the stories in this year’s collection — their range, their variety, and their exceptionally high quality. Crime fiction has always been a broad and inclusive field, but these stories epitomize its breadth, running from the literary to the retro-pulp. The field has always showcased new talent, and a full two thirds of this year’s winners are by writers previously unknown to me. I’ve been reading short crime for half a century, and writing it for almost that long, and I’m still blown away by how very fine these stories are.”

Following the commercial success of the original Manhattan Noir, mystery titan Lawrence Block explores the historic literary roots of this dark island.

Featuring stories by: Edith Wharton, Stephen Crane, O. Henry, Langston Hughes, Irwin Shaw, Jerome Weidman, Damon Runyon, Evan Hunter, Jerrold Mundis, Edgar Allan Poe, Horace Gregory, Geoffrey Bartholomew, Cornell Woolrich, Barry N. Malzberg, Clark Howard, Jerome Charyn, Donald E. Westlake, Joyce Carol Oates, Lawrence Block, and Susan Isaacs.

A best-selling novelist and Edgar Award winner, Lisa Scottoline brings her mastery of the thriller genre as well as her wit and heart to this collection of the must-reads in mysteries.