Having Harlan Coben’s name big and bold on the cover of this anthology is going to be the main reason it moves copies, which is a little ironic since his contribution is about one of maybe three stories that doesn’t quite click. But other than that, the Coben-edited MYSTERY WRITERS OF AMERICA PRESENTS DEATH DO US PART: NEW STORIES ABOUT LOVE, LUST, AND MURDER is a top-notch collection of crime tales centering around relationships gone sour. On second thought, make that “gone rancid.”
Proving he can do more than Jack Reacher novels, Lee Child provides the book’s first home run with “Safe Enough,” about a construction worker intervening in a woman’s abusive marriage, which he’ll regret. Halfway through, I was so engrossed, I totally forgot I was reading Child. Next is Hard Case Crime mastermind Charles Ardai with “The Home Front,” a WWII-era period piece in which a gas-ration enforcement officer ends up having to hide out with the family whose son’s death he caused, and gets involved with the boy’s mother.
The lesser-known authors prove their mettle, too. In “Heat Lightning,” William Kent Krueger tells a moving story about a doomed-from-all-sides love triangle, in which one of the points is a terminally ill wife. Similar in generating honest, aching sorrow is Rick McMahan’s small-town tragedy “The Cold, Hard Truth.” Just as absorbing – albeit for entirely different reasons – is Tim Wohlforth’s seuxally charged mystery, “The Masseuse.”
Tim Maleeny offers a bit of levity in the clever, cutthroat “Till Death Do Us Part,” a veritable buffet of black humor among two long-married (and long-suffering) scientists. Matching it in originality if not quite wit is Tom Savage’s “Cyberdate.com,” taking the form of transcripts of instant-messaging sessions. And Jay Brandon takes a cue from current headlines with “Pushed or Was Fell,” in which a couple’s cruise-ship honeymoon yields fatal results.
With Steve Hockensmith proving the highlight of the current FIFTY YEARS OF CRIME AND SUPSENSE anthology, I expected a repeat performance, but his “Blarney” marks one of DEATH’s few drab spots. And though his story isn’t quite amongst the cream, the surprise here is R.L. Stine. Knowing him only from GOOSEBUMPS and other greasy kid stuff, he shows gleeful flashes of the macabre in “Wifey,” about a guy who inherits his best friend’s dog.
P.J. Parrish, Ridley Pearson and Jeff Abbott also number among the 18 contributors, all of whom turn in never-before-published works, except – oddly enough – Coben, who lazily trots out a nine-year-old piece from the pages of Mary Higgins Clark’s Mystery Magazine. Shame on you, Harlan, but glory to you in the highest for assembling this ace treasury. –Rod Lott
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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THESE AUTHORS:
• DEAL BREAKER by Harlan Coben
• THE HARD WAY by Lee Child
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