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TRANSGRESSIONS
by Ed McBain, editor
Forge, May 2005
896 pages
$27.95
ISBN: 0765308517


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

I know that somewhere out there, someone is probably thinking that I shouldn't say negative things about a book edited by Ed McBain, who very recently died. McBain was a writing fixture in mystery fiction for decades and this collection, weighing in at over 775 pages, with an introduction written by him in August 2004, could be one of the last projects he worked on, outside of the story he was telling of his cancer.

Alas, while it's a huge book, I was quite disappointed with the collection. I thought it brave to offer an anthology of novellas; it's not a form we see often in mystery. This long story form has some of the advantages of the short story, but allows an author more time to develop plot and character. McBain stated that other than length and a loose adherence to crime, mystery, or suspense there were no guidelines or limits given to the contributors. And good for him, because that probably gave lots of authors freedom to experiment.

If the stories were experiments, most of them failed for me. Much of that is simply a matter of taste and another reader will instantly go for the things that didn't work for me. For example, while I've read the very talented Lawrence Block for years, his Keller character doesn't do it for me, and that's the focus of his contribution, Keller's Adjustment, to this anthology. I read one of the Keller books, and couldn't manage to care about the protagonist, and not because (this is not a surprise, or a spoiler) he is a hit man. I certainly didn't like or care about Keller and didn't find the edgy style to my taste.

Donald Westlake is well admired and loved and again, I didn't connect with his novella here. I tried, honest, but I have never been a Dortmunder fan and Walking Around Money is a Dortmunder story. I did try, believe me, to read all the contributions because I was dismayed at my lack of enthusiasm. But this book is just not for me.

I had the same sort of reaction to the editor's contribution. I hadn't read McBain in a long time -- I'd once read some 87th Precinct novels, but his flat style had left me wanting a long time ago; and Merely Hate reminded me of our differences. Classic McBain -- if you like him, I'm sure you will enjoy this story. For me it was repetitious and, well, I never got what it was about these cops that folks enjoyed; they seem to be pretty one-dimensional. But that's me. McBain sold well and this was editing, which is a very different skill.

I saw names like Jeffery Deaver and Walter Mosley which attracted me, but while Deaver's Forever mostly worked, it felt a little trendy, about a statistician/mathematician working at seeing patterns for the police department and taking on an apparently suicide. And I had to give up part way through the Mosley story because it just was so over-the-top. In Archibald Lawless, Anarchist at Large: Walking the Line, Mosley creates, as he always does, multi-dimensional characters, but I found the tale just too outrageous and unbelievable, going in too many directions.

Other works lacked even the loose adherence to crime, mystery, or suspense; Sharyn McCrumb's novella is a story about a bit of history she apparently came across and clearly found fascinating (she even provides a dozen references at the end) and while it's a very interesting story, about a man who works for a medical school during the Civil War, it lacks any mystery. Okay, technically crime is committed but that's a pretty silly argument.

McCrumb is one of three female contributors to this collection, another being Joyce Carol Oates, and again, I could not click with her very creepy The Corn Maiden where a child has disappeared. She writes in an odd unconnected style and I couldn't follow the story line, even though I tried. Although children in jeopardy is usually a theme I skip, I kept trying to find something about this anthology to sing about.

I can't recommend TRANSGRESSIONS; but I can imagine another reader finding the stories fascinating and wondering what my problems were. It's not the format, but the stories in this collection did not, I think, show the authors at the their best.

Reviewed by Andi Shechter, July 2005

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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