Baker's Dozen: 13 Short Mystery Novels

by Martin H. Greenberg (Editor), Bill Pronzini (Editor), Ed McBain

Stories by authors including Rex Stout, Ed McBain, John D. MacDonald, and Raymond Chandler depict the struggles to solve baffling crimes

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Anthologies

595 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Martin Harry Greenberg was an American academic and speculative fiction anthologist. In all, he compiled 1,298 anthologies and commissioned over 8,200 original short stories. He founded Tekno Books, a packager of more than 2000 published books. In addition, he was a co-founder of the Sci-Fi Channel.

For the 1950s anthologist and publisher of Gnome Press, see Martin Greenberg.

Reviews

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only thing I read this in collection was the classic Woolrich story, "Nightmare".

“If a man could pass through paradise in a dream, and had a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he woke – Aye, and what then?”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ANIMA POETAE (1816)

A man wakes from a terrible nightmare of violent murder, only to discover that there are physical traces and evidence of it having actually occurred. He is haunted by this until a trip in the countryside (with his sister and police detective brother-in-law) triggers deja vu and they discover the site of an unsolved crime meeting the exact details of the nightmare.

This is classic Woolrich - a man agonizing in his soul over something he believes he didn't do but all evidence points to the contrary. The *explanation*, when it comes - hypnotism - may seem a bit much but you *are* reading genre fiction, to make the point, and I like how Woolrich upends the conventions of these type of stories to resolve the conflict, yet still make the events resonant, terrible and unnerving (the main character was hypnotized into being a murder weapon because of his weak will - he DID kill but only as someone else's instrument - which is cold comfort, even though the victims are made out to be less than innocent. It's a really enjoyable read. Given some choice lines, one can read a subtext of Woolrich agonizing over his secret gay identity in this tale as well and, as usual, there's that point that Francis M. Nevins Jr. makes - that one of the strengths of Woolrich's oeuvre is that, given his focus on random chance as a manifestation of a malignant universe, you the reader are never actually sure (or relaxed) in how his stories are going to turn out, for good or ill. This fact is very true of "Nightmare" and makes it that much more of a suspenseful read.

[James S. · Rating 1 out of 5]

A collection of hideously mediocre novellas and short stories (not "novels" as its title claims), improved only by Daphne du Maurier's wonderfully macabre "Don't Look Now", which isn't even a mystery story at all, but a horror/fantasy one. (The movie of the same name is equally excellent.) The only other story that's even readable is Bill Pronzini's "Booktaker", and even that one is silly and trivial. Every other story in this collection is terrible - poorly written, contrived, forgettable, and superficial. Is this anthology a graveyard of failed novels that the authors tried to repackage as novellas? Did the editors let their enthusiasm for the genre override their taste? Perhaps the editors simply have poor taste themselves. Whatever the reason, this is one of the worst anthologies I've ever read.

[K Saju · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good story list, worth a read

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

Entertaining collection of 13 mystery novellas by 13 authors.

[Deana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up somewhere a long time ago, maybe a yard sale or a thrift store, and it sat on my shelf for ages. I finally decided to pick it up and see what it held inside.

This was a good, entertaining book of short mystery novels. Some of them, I think, were actually excerpts from longer novels, or books that were part of a series so there was some information I felt I was missing, but none of it was important to the story at hand. Most of the stories I found really entertaining and was kept in suspense, though a few were too easy to guess what was going on. If you want to know my (brief) thoughts on each individual story, read my individual status updates that I wrote as I went along.

A lot of the stories are somewhat out-of-date, many of them set in the 40s or 50s I'd say, maybe a few a little later than that. No cell phones or other modern technology, which in some cases could have made a big difference in the stories. And some of the terminology they use made me giggle, too.

This is the kind of book I can keep on hand because I won't remember the individual stories for too long, so I could read them all over again in a few years and re-live the mystery! I recommend this as a good set. And of course, since there are multiple stories there are great places to stop reading when needed. For particular stories, I really recommend "Nightmare" and "Death Rides a Boxcar". I also really enjoyed "Murder Set to Music", and the ending to that one left me satisfied. The Daphne du Maurier short ... typically not my style (I'm not into paranormal generally) but it had my heart racing because with all the foreshadowing I just -knew- something bad would happen. And "Booktaker" (by the editor), while not too deep, kept me guessing and led me down false paths. Not a bad percentage of good stories!

[James Kirk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of the shorts in this collection were quite old, so the vernacular could tend to be a bit dated. But as my next novel is about a pet sitting detective, I really wanted to get a feel for how some of those older stories felt--how did they sound off the tongue, what were the character voices like, the scene descriptions, etc.

For anyone interested in writing detective stories or just likes to read them, this is a thick book with hours of reading enjoyment.

[Lisa]

03.15.2019