Fresh Blood II (Bloodlines) (No. 2) [Paperback]

Mike Ripley (Author), Maxim Jakubowski (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Bloodlines | Publication Date: April 6, 1998

Given their edgy milieu, the best stories--Lovesey's strangulation in reading time, Ripley's cuckolded gambler, and Green's transvestite wife-killer--are in many ways the most traditional. Altogether, a stronger collection than its in-your-face predecessor.""--Kirkus Reviews. ""This second collection of edgy new crime fiction showcases some of Britain's best young talent.""--Publishers Weekly

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This second collection of edgy new crime fiction showcases some of Britain's best young talent. In Christopher Brookmyre's "Bampot Central," two hapless youths straight out of Trainspotting hold up an Edinburgh post office. For the off-duty copper caught in the ensuing impromptu hostage situation, taking charge comes easy?maybe a little too easy. A bitter, retired Queen's Counsel watches the other inhabitants of an old-folks home with increasing annoyance in Mary Scott's "An Hour After Lunch." They're a petty and annoying bunch. They're also dying off at an alarming rate, and society's indifference to the aged gives the murderer a very effective shelter. Phil Lovesey (son of esteemed crime master Peter Lovesey) writes from the point of view of a killer in "Strangulation," repeatedly returning to the details of the actual murder to let us know just what a long, drawn out, drooly mess of a business strangling a woman is. The first Fresh Blood showed us the likes of Michael Dibden and John Harvey. This latest collection is occasionally risky and not uniformly impressive, but it offers reason to imagine that some of the talent on display will soon crack crime fiction's top rank.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

If they don't watch out, editors Ripley and Jakubowski, whose Fresh Blood (1997) seemed the anthology with something to offend everybody, will find themselves getting snapped up by old ladies of both sexes. Of the 15 entries here, two (by Christine Green and R.D. Wingfield) are by authors you'd never expect to find in such rough company; two more (Lauren Henderson's Agatha Christie update and Charles Higson's Poe homage) have their roots in the distant past; at least four (Higson's car thief, Christopher Brookmyre's bank robbers, Carol Anne Davis's social worker, and editor Ripley's impotent avenger) get their ironic, and generally comic, effects from the oldest dodge in the book, the hero's incompetence. Of the other contributors--Mary Scott, John Tilsley, Phil Lovesey, Ken Bruen, Iain Sinclair, John L. Williams, John Baker, and editor Jakubowski--only Tilsley, Bruen, and Sinclair go for the kitchen-sink realism of the first Fresh Blood. Given their edgy milieu, the best stories--Lovesey's strangulation in reading time, Ripley's cuckolded gambler, and Green's transvestite wife-killer--are in many ways the most traditional. Altogether, a stronger collection than its in-your-face predecessor. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Do Not Pr (April 6, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1899344209
• ISBN-13: 978-1899344208
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,106,052 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Strong, but More Mainstream than FB1, May 16, 2001

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fresh Blood II (Bloodlines) (No. 2) (Paperback)

While these fifteen stories representing "the cream of Britain's new wave of crime writers" comprise a stronger collection than the standard mixed-bag anthology, they are decidedly more mainstream and less edgy than the stories in the first "Fresh Blood" collection. The only ones worth totally skipping are John Tilsley's San Francisco-set tale and the throwaway coda contrivance by RD Wingfield. The cream of the crop (somewhat surprisingly given the mainstreamedness of his novel Not the End of the World) is probably Christopher Brookmyre's "Bampot Central," a hilarious tale of two idiotic Scottish bank robbers. Phil Lovesy's "Stranglehold" is a tight little story, done in real-time. Both the editors turn in strong stories, although it would be nice if Jakubowski could weed out the Anglicisms from his U.S.-set stories. For some reason I quite liked John Baker's "Defence," even though it's not apparently a crime story until the last two paragraphs. John Williams provides another quality story in his ongoing series on the Cardiff underworld (the story was later reprinted in his collection, Five Pubs, Two Bars, and a Night Club). Mary Scott and Lauren Henderson's stories fine, though nothing special, and Ken Bruen (Rilke on Black, The Hackman Blues) once again doesn't do anything for me. Two homages, (Charles Higson's to "The Tell-Tale Heart" and Christine Green's to "Psycho"), are quite effective, as is Carol Anne Davis's (Shrouded) typically creepy "The Ghosts of Bees." Iain Sinclair's "No More Yoga at the Night Club" is an East End number whose appeal will largely lie in the reader's own affinity for that particular place (cf. Jake Arnott's The Long Firm).