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Master's Choice: Mystery Stories by Today's Top Writers and the Masters Who Inspired Them, Vol. II
An outstanding array of crime fiction by some of today's leading authors is accompanied by short stories from the acclaimed writers who inspired them and features works by Ian Rankin, Joyce Carol Oates, Mary Higgins Clark, Evan Hunter, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, and other notables.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2000
4 people are currently reading
52 people want to read
About the author
Lawrence Block
761 books2,999 followersLawrence Block has been writing crime, mystery, and suspense fiction for more than half a century. He has published in excess (oh, wretched excess!) of 100 books, and no end of short stories.
Born in Buffalo, N.Y., LB attended Antioch College, but left before completing his studies; school authorities advised him that they felt he’d be happier elsewhere, and he thought this was remarkably perceptive of them.
His earliest work, published pseudonymously in the late 1950s, was mostly in the field of midcentury erotica, an apprenticeship he shared with Donald E. Westlake and Robert Silverberg. The first time Lawrence Block’s name appeared in print was when his short story “You Can’t Lose” was published in the February 1958 issue of Manhunt. The first book published under his own name was Mona (1961); it was reissued several times over the years, once as Sweet Slow Death. In 2005 it became the first offering from Hard Case Crime, and bore for the first time LB’s original title, Grifter’s Game.
LB is best known for his series characters, including cop-turned-private investigator Matthew Scudder, gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, globe-trotting insomniac Evan Tanner, and introspective assassin Keller.
Because one name is never enough, LB has also published under pseudonyms including Jill Emerson, John Warren Wells, Lesley Evans, and Anne Campbell Clarke.
LB’s magazine appearances include American Heritage, Redbook, Playboy, Linn’s Stamp News, Cosmopolitan, GQ, and The New York Times. His monthly instructional column ran in Writer’s Digest for 14 years, and led to a string of books for writers, including the classics Telling Lies for Fun & Profit and The Liar’s Bible. He has also written episodic television (Tilt!) and the Wong Kar-wai film, My Blueberry Nights.
Several of LB’s books have been filmed. The latest, A Walk Among the Tombstones, stars Liam Neeson as Matthew Scudder and is scheduled for release in September, 2014.
LB is a Grand Master of Mystery Writers of America, and a past president of MWA and the Private Eye Writers of America. He has won the Edgar and Shamus awards four times each, and the Japanese Maltese Falcon award twice, as well as the Nero Wolfe and Philip Marlowe awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and the Diamond Dagger for Life Achievement from the Crime Writers Association (UK). He’s also been honored with the Gumshoe Lifetime Achievement Award from Mystery Ink magazine and the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer for Lifetime Achievement in the short story. In France, he has been proclaimed a Grand Maitre du Roman Noir and has twice been awarded the Societe 813 trophy. He has been a guest of honor at Bouchercon and at book fairs and mystery festivals in France, Germany, Australia, Italy, New Zealand, Spain and Taiwan. As if that were not enough, he was also presented with the key to the city of Muncie, Indiana. (But as soon as he left, they changed the locks.)
LB and his wife Lynne are enthusiastic New Yorkers and relentless world travelers; the two are members of the Travelers Century Club, and have visited around 160 countries.
He is a modest and humble fellow, although you would never guess as much from this biographical note.
Born in Buffalo, N.Y., LB attended Antioch College, but left before completing his studies; school authorities advised him that they felt he’d be happier elsewhere, and he thought this was remarkably perceptive of them.
His earliest work, published pseudonymously in the late 1950s, was mostly in the field of midcentury erotica, an apprenticeship he shared with Donald E. Westlake and Robert Silverberg. The first time Lawrence Block’s name appeared in print was when his short story “You Can’t Lose” was published in the February 1958 issue of Manhunt. The first book published under his own name was Mona (1961); it was reissued several times over the years, once as Sweet Slow Death. In 2005 it became the first offering from Hard Case Crime, and bore for the first time LB’s original title, Grifter’s Game.
LB is best known for his series characters, including cop-turned-private investigator Matthew Scudder, gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, globe-trotting insomniac Evan Tanner, and introspective assassin Keller.
Because one name is never enough, LB has also published under pseudonyms including Jill Emerson, John Warren Wells, Lesley Evans, and Anne Campbell Clarke.
LB’s magazine appearances include American Heritage, Redbook, Playboy, Linn’s Stamp News, Cosmopolitan, GQ, and The New York Times. His monthly instructional column ran in Writer’s Digest for 14 years, and led to a string of books for writers, including the classics Telling Lies for Fun & Profit and The Liar’s Bible. He has also written episodic television (Tilt!) and the Wong Kar-wai film, My Blueberry Nights.
Several of LB’s books have been filmed. The latest, A Walk Among the Tombstones, stars Liam Neeson as Matthew Scudder and is scheduled for release in September, 2014.
LB is a Grand Master of Mystery Writers of America, and a past president of MWA and the Private Eye Writers of America. He has won the Edgar and Shamus awards four times each, and the Japanese Maltese Falcon award twice, as well as the Nero Wolfe and Philip Marlowe awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and the Diamond Dagger for Life Achievement from the Crime Writers Association (UK). He’s also been honored with the Gumshoe Lifetime Achievement Award from Mystery Ink magazine and the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer for Lifetime Achievement in the short story. In France, he has been proclaimed a Grand Maitre du Roman Noir and has twice been awarded the Societe 813 trophy. He has been a guest of honor at Bouchercon and at book fairs and mystery festivals in France, Germany, Australia, Italy, New Zealand, Spain and Taiwan. As if that were not enough, he was also presented with the key to the city of Muncie, Indiana. (But as soon as he left, they changed the locks.)
LB and his wife Lynne are enthusiastic New Yorkers and relentless world travelers; the two are members of the Travelers Century Club, and have visited around 160 countries.
He is a modest and humble fellow, although you would never guess as much from this biographical note.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 12, 2021
The premise of this 2000 anthology is simple. Editor Lawrence Block asked thirteen bestselling authors to choose a favorite story they wrote, paired with another favorite story written by an author they admire.
I found this to be a big disappointment. Whereas the first volume was surprisingly deep, I only cared for a few stories in Vol 2.
The best stories are "Sometimes They Bite", "Cry Silence", "The Last One to Cry", "Sredni Vashtar", "No Night By Myself" and "Lover".
Honorable mentions go to "True Thomas", "Cousin Cora", and "You Can't Be a Little Girl All Your Life". These stories were strong but suffered from some near-fatal flaws. The remainders are average to below-average.
Here are my individual story reviews:
"Puppyland" by Doug Allyn (1996) -- A whodunit involving a terminally ill wife, her dog, and a philandering husband. A lot of reviewers seem to like this story, but I thought it was a bit melodramatic. Plus, it lacks enough compelling suspects to be entirely successful.
"Child of Another Time" by William Bankier (1983) -- A young intern flirts with Blake Metcalf at an office party. He becomes obsessed with the idea she may actually be his daughter, whom he believed died seventeen years ago but might have been kidnapped from the hospital. This is an engrossing story, but Metcalfe's internally inconsistent decisions caused the ending to fall flat.
"The Man Next Door" by Mary Higgins Clark (1998)-- A young woman is kidnapped by her emotionally stunted neighbor, who gains entrance into her house by chiseling out the cinderblocks of their shared basement wall. Clark seems to be a limited sort of writer. There is no doubt she is adept at this woman-in-peril formula, but this tale never attempts to do anything unique or different.
"The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allen Poe (1843) -- In this famous fever dream of a story, the narrator keeps hearing the heartbeats of the man he killed and buried beneath his floorboards.
"The Criminal" by Joe Gores (1970)-- In a future society that enforces conformity and genetic purity through technology, a radical criminal goes rogue for fifteen days. Crime authors are rarely successful when they attempt to write sci-fi, and this is no exception. Highly derivative of Huxley's Brave New World and Ellison's "Repent, Harlequin, Said the Ticktockman".
"The Knife" by John Russell (1925) -- An uneducated wharf rat is apprenticed to and mistreated by a ship's cook. When marooned on a South Pacific island, he must learn to survive by his own wits and ingenuity. This 1925 adventure tale telegraphs its ending and comes across as moralistic.
"True Thomas" by Reginald Hill (1993) -- A cop tries to go 24 hours without telling a lie. This ranges from the absurd (he tells his wife she is getting fat) to the serious (he refuses to plant evidence at a crime scene). The story is predictable but the characters are engaging. I also enjoyed how it ties back to the medieval Scottish ballad about Thomas the Rhymer.
"Markheim" by Robert Louis Stevenson (1885) -- A murderer is confronted during the commission of his crime by a demon offering him assistance. They engage in a spirited theological debate about the nature of evil, which eventually prompts the man to turn himself in rather than endure the continual degradation of his soul. While I did not much care for the story, I loved this line: "To have done the deed, and yet not to reap the profit, would be too abhorrent a failure."
"The Detective's Wife" by Edward Hoch (1990) -- A policeman's wife solves a string of random killings to save the career of her increasingly hostile husband.
"You Can't Be a Little Girl All Your Life" by Stanley Ellin (1958) -- A woman is brutally assaulted, and the cops badger her to identify her assailant, even though she never saw him. This story has a wonderful 50's noir feel, brimming with subtext and slimy characters. However, I was struck by the absurdity of reading a story about rape in which neither the act nor even the word itself can be referenced directly. I don't know if this was the author's artistic choice or the publisher's decency standards. Adapted into an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1961 starring Dick York.
"The Last One to Cry" by Clark Howard (1986) -- A corporate personnel director crosses paths with the man who killed his friend twenty years ago in a reform school. This story constructs a devastating, lived-in world of child abuse and also examines the question of whether revenge is ever worth the cost.
"The Absence of Emily" by Jack Ritchie (1980) -- A husband whose wife is away for several weeks begins to act suspiciously, leading relatives to suspect him of murder. The twist ending is surprising, but I found the plotting too cutesy to be satisfying. This story won an Edgar award. It was adapted into an episode of Tales of the Unexpected in 1982, and then again into a short film in 2003.
"The Interview" by Evan Hunter (1971) -- A controlling, neurotic movie director has to answer questions about the death of his leading lady on the set. This is Hunter's satirical send-up of Hitchcock and Hollywood.
"Eleven O'clock Bulletin" by Robert Turner (1955) -- A young man begins drinking and acting out because he dreads the announcement he knows will come on the 11 o'clock news. Adapted into an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1959.
"Adele" by Stuart Kaminsky (1995) -- An investigator searches for a runaway teen but finds himself solving a double murder case instead. The clues come to the detective too rapidly and too easily to sustain any real tension.
"The Death of Colonel Thoureau" by Anonymous (1861) -- The titular colonel is found in a locked room with his throat slit and a only a single bloody footprint left behind as a clue. This is an engaging mystery (although it hangs all too much on coincidences). Significantly, it points to a lost and forgotten post-Poe mystery genre in American letters during the Civil War years.
"Foggy Mountain Breakdown" by Sharyn McCrumb (1997) -- Nine year old Davy squares off against a bully in Depression-era Tennessee.
"Sredni Vashtar" by Saki (1912) -- A sickly boy with a domineering aunt engineers his revenge. This is a short, sharp, funny, horrible story that perfectly captures the rage and impotence of an embittered child.
"Lover" by Joyce Carol Oates (1997) -- A spurned woman plots to killer her former lover, and maybe herself, by engineering a massive interstate car crash. "At high speeds, unhappiness is slightly ridiculous." Oates is one of our greatest living short story writers, and this is a superb example of how she packs a novel's worth of detail into only a few pages.
"The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe (1843) -- An alcoholic descends into madness and murder when he believes he is being haunted by a black cat.
"Adventures in Babysitting" by Ian Rankin (1995) -- A "minder" has to babysit an A-list Hollywood actor and his entourage for three days in London. This is an engaging, funny story even though there is a corpse in the middle of the action that has no reason to be there.
"No Night by Myself" by Mat Coward (1995) -- A suburban couple's home is invaded on Christmas Eve by a career criminal known as Madness. This is a quirky comedy-horror hybrid that works because it's told from the point of view of the bad guy.
"Cousin Cora" by Carolyn Wheat (1990) -- An eleven year old boy who likes to play Sherlock Holmes gets a chance to solve a real mystery when Cousin Cora shows up and blackmails his mother. He learns it is sometimes better for hard truths to stay buried. I really liked this story except it never got around to answering one of its central mysteries: What was Cora's relationship with the dead girl?
"A Jury of Her Peers" by Susan Glaspell (1917) -- A farmer's wife and a sheriff's wife solve a murder on the sly, while their husbands are baffled by the lack of apparent motive. Written first as a play then a short story, this was perhaps ahead of its time as a forerunner of famous female detectives.
"Sometimes They Bite" by Lawrence Block (1975) -- Two strangers chat on a lakeshore while fishing in the late afternoon. The prose in this short piece is near-brilliant, as the author slowly dials up the tension until it boils over in an unforgettable conclusion.
"Cry Silence" by Fredrick Brown (1948) -- If two starving people locked in a shed scream out for rescue, and no one is around to hear them, do they make any sound? Three men waiting for the afternoon train rehash the old argument about the tree in the forest, for the benefit of a fourth man on the platform, who may be deaf or who may be a murderer or who may be both. This story is less than five pages but it packs a memorable punch.
I found this to be a big disappointment. Whereas the first volume was surprisingly deep, I only cared for a few stories in Vol 2.
The best stories are "Sometimes They Bite", "Cry Silence", "The Last One to Cry", "Sredni Vashtar", "No Night By Myself" and "Lover".
Honorable mentions go to "True Thomas", "Cousin Cora", and "You Can't Be a Little Girl All Your Life". These stories were strong but suffered from some near-fatal flaws. The remainders are average to below-average.
Here are my individual story reviews:
"Puppyland" by Doug Allyn (1996) -- A whodunit involving a terminally ill wife, her dog, and a philandering husband. A lot of reviewers seem to like this story, but I thought it was a bit melodramatic. Plus, it lacks enough compelling suspects to be entirely successful.
"Child of Another Time" by William Bankier (1983) -- A young intern flirts with Blake Metcalf at an office party. He becomes obsessed with the idea she may actually be his daughter, whom he believed died seventeen years ago but might have been kidnapped from the hospital. This is an engrossing story, but Metcalfe's internally inconsistent decisions caused the ending to fall flat.
"The Man Next Door" by Mary Higgins Clark (1998)-- A young woman is kidnapped by her emotionally stunted neighbor, who gains entrance into her house by chiseling out the cinderblocks of their shared basement wall. Clark seems to be a limited sort of writer. There is no doubt she is adept at this woman-in-peril formula, but this tale never attempts to do anything unique or different.
"The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allen Poe (1843) -- In this famous fever dream of a story, the narrator keeps hearing the heartbeats of the man he killed and buried beneath his floorboards.
"The Criminal" by Joe Gores (1970)-- In a future society that enforces conformity and genetic purity through technology, a radical criminal goes rogue for fifteen days. Crime authors are rarely successful when they attempt to write sci-fi, and this is no exception. Highly derivative of Huxley's Brave New World and Ellison's "Repent, Harlequin, Said the Ticktockman".
"The Knife" by John Russell (1925) -- An uneducated wharf rat is apprenticed to and mistreated by a ship's cook. When marooned on a South Pacific island, he must learn to survive by his own wits and ingenuity. This 1925 adventure tale telegraphs its ending and comes across as moralistic.
"True Thomas" by Reginald Hill (1993) -- A cop tries to go 24 hours without telling a lie. This ranges from the absurd (he tells his wife she is getting fat) to the serious (he refuses to plant evidence at a crime scene). The story is predictable but the characters are engaging. I also enjoyed how it ties back to the medieval Scottish ballad about Thomas the Rhymer.
"Markheim" by Robert Louis Stevenson (1885) -- A murderer is confronted during the commission of his crime by a demon offering him assistance. They engage in a spirited theological debate about the nature of evil, which eventually prompts the man to turn himself in rather than endure the continual degradation of his soul. While I did not much care for the story, I loved this line: "To have done the deed, and yet not to reap the profit, would be too abhorrent a failure."
"The Detective's Wife" by Edward Hoch (1990) -- A policeman's wife solves a string of random killings to save the career of her increasingly hostile husband.
"You Can't Be a Little Girl All Your Life" by Stanley Ellin (1958) -- A woman is brutally assaulted, and the cops badger her to identify her assailant, even though she never saw him. This story has a wonderful 50's noir feel, brimming with subtext and slimy characters. However, I was struck by the absurdity of reading a story about rape in which neither the act nor even the word itself can be referenced directly. I don't know if this was the author's artistic choice or the publisher's decency standards. Adapted into an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1961 starring Dick York.
"The Last One to Cry" by Clark Howard (1986) -- A corporate personnel director crosses paths with the man who killed his friend twenty years ago in a reform school. This story constructs a devastating, lived-in world of child abuse and also examines the question of whether revenge is ever worth the cost.
"The Absence of Emily" by Jack Ritchie (1980) -- A husband whose wife is away for several weeks begins to act suspiciously, leading relatives to suspect him of murder. The twist ending is surprising, but I found the plotting too cutesy to be satisfying. This story won an Edgar award. It was adapted into an episode of Tales of the Unexpected in 1982, and then again into a short film in 2003.
"The Interview" by Evan Hunter (1971) -- A controlling, neurotic movie director has to answer questions about the death of his leading lady on the set. This is Hunter's satirical send-up of Hitchcock and Hollywood.
"Eleven O'clock Bulletin" by Robert Turner (1955) -- A young man begins drinking and acting out because he dreads the announcement he knows will come on the 11 o'clock news. Adapted into an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1959.
"Adele" by Stuart Kaminsky (1995) -- An investigator searches for a runaway teen but finds himself solving a double murder case instead. The clues come to the detective too rapidly and too easily to sustain any real tension.
"The Death of Colonel Thoureau" by Anonymous (1861) -- The titular colonel is found in a locked room with his throat slit and a only a single bloody footprint left behind as a clue. This is an engaging mystery (although it hangs all too much on coincidences). Significantly, it points to a lost and forgotten post-Poe mystery genre in American letters during the Civil War years.
"Foggy Mountain Breakdown" by Sharyn McCrumb (1997) -- Nine year old Davy squares off against a bully in Depression-era Tennessee.
"Sredni Vashtar" by Saki (1912) -- A sickly boy with a domineering aunt engineers his revenge. This is a short, sharp, funny, horrible story that perfectly captures the rage and impotence of an embittered child.
"Lover" by Joyce Carol Oates (1997) -- A spurned woman plots to killer her former lover, and maybe herself, by engineering a massive interstate car crash. "At high speeds, unhappiness is slightly ridiculous." Oates is one of our greatest living short story writers, and this is a superb example of how she packs a novel's worth of detail into only a few pages.
"The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe (1843) -- An alcoholic descends into madness and murder when he believes he is being haunted by a black cat.
"Adventures in Babysitting" by Ian Rankin (1995) -- A "minder" has to babysit an A-list Hollywood actor and his entourage for three days in London. This is an engaging, funny story even though there is a corpse in the middle of the action that has no reason to be there.
"No Night by Myself" by Mat Coward (1995) -- A suburban couple's home is invaded on Christmas Eve by a career criminal known as Madness. This is a quirky comedy-horror hybrid that works because it's told from the point of view of the bad guy.
"Cousin Cora" by Carolyn Wheat (1990) -- An eleven year old boy who likes to play Sherlock Holmes gets a chance to solve a real mystery when Cousin Cora shows up and blackmails his mother. He learns it is sometimes better for hard truths to stay buried. I really liked this story except it never got around to answering one of its central mysteries: What was Cora's relationship with the dead girl?
"A Jury of Her Peers" by Susan Glaspell (1917) -- A farmer's wife and a sheriff's wife solve a murder on the sly, while their husbands are baffled by the lack of apparent motive. Written first as a play then a short story, this was perhaps ahead of its time as a forerunner of famous female detectives.
"Sometimes They Bite" by Lawrence Block (1975) -- Two strangers chat on a lakeshore while fishing in the late afternoon. The prose in this short piece is near-brilliant, as the author slowly dials up the tension until it boils over in an unforgettable conclusion.
"Cry Silence" by Fredrick Brown (1948) -- If two starving people locked in a shed scream out for rescue, and no one is around to hear them, do they make any sound? Three men waiting for the afternoon train rehash the old argument about the tree in the forest, for the benefit of a fourth man on the platform, who may be deaf or who may be a murderer or who may be both. This story is less than five pages but it packs a memorable punch.
February 24, 2022
Not what I would usually read, but ok.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews