D.H. Schleicher's Reviews > Bitter Ends: 20 Short Stories of Murder and Mayhem

John Greco’s short story collection, Bitter Ends, is jam-packed with quick, nasty little numbers full of cheating and murdering spouses and twisty turns of fate. If there’s a lesson to be found…it’s probably this: never agree to a prenup. While some of the stories seem more like sketches and aren’t as fleshed out as others, there are a few real stand-outs of the noir genre: Good for Nothing, We All Got What We Wanted (probably my favorite…with its Upstate New York setting), and A Marriage to Die For. All are great fun to read on your lunch break, salacious little morsels that are like spying on your most scandalous neighbors, peering out your window while chomping down on a tasty sandwich or shoveling pasta in your mouth. Then there is Assisted Living, another standout, but more so for being a slice-of-life that is somehow both sad and sunny. Not every story here is a winner, but hey, maybe’s that’s another lesson to glean: you can’t always be a winner in life (but you can plot some loser’s murder!)