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If you like historical mysteries as well as short stories, I suspect you're going to enjoy the BEST OF BRITISH MYSTERIES 2006. As I don't tend to read historical stuff, a lot of the volume passed me by. The strength of a good anthology is balancing both the writers and their subject matter and I never quite felt editor Maxim Jakubowski had done that. He's certainly got some of the big names in UK crime fiction on board, but too many of the stories seemed much of a muchness. Half the fun of anthologies is finding writers you don't know so well and then nipping off and exploring their other work. I was more than a tad disappointed that the writers who grabbed me by the throat were those I already knew. The best stories by a mile are those by Ken Bruen, Peter Robinson, John Harvey and Mark Billingham. Harvey in particular is a great exponent of the short story art -- DRUMMER UNKNOWN had me hooked from the first page. And yes, OK, so I'd read Ken Bruen's shopping list, but FADE TO . . . BROOKLYN is a sharp, focused little gem done through the eyes of an Irish loser. Billingham's STROKE OF LUCK ain't what you'd call a laugh a minute, but it has a beginning, a middle and an end -- and you can't always say that of short stories where writers seem to fall foul of the 'home in time for tea' syndrome. And any story with cricket in has to be OK by me! Robinson's THE MAGIC OF YOUR TOUCH is a really creepy story with a musical angle and more than a hint of woo-woo. But heck, it works. And speaking of woo-woo, I did rather like John Connolly's THE INKPOT MONKEY about a writer and his weird find. Several stories in the anthology have linked themes. I had just read a collection of short stories based on the 12 Days of Christmas song -- and promptly opened this anthology to find two of them collected here. I still can't make my mind up about Val McDermid's FOUR CALLING BIRDS, although she deserves credit for trying something a bit out of the ordinary with a story set in an northern bingo hall. Jake Arnott's TEN LORDS A-LEAPING, with Marx and Engels as investigators, was boring the first time and no better the second time. And I finally finished a John Mortimer story. Not my bag at all, but I can see why he's got the following he has. But boy, doesn't the smart alec-ness hold the action up . . . Oh, and you might like to note that all the stories in this anthology have appeared elsewhere. I don't read a lot of short stories, but I'd read four or five of them already. Caveat emptor, as they say!
Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, December 2005
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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