Customer Reviews

Murder by Magic: Twenty Tales of Crime and the Supernatural

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

It is very rare that I am able to say that I enjoyed every story in an anthology, but that is the case for this volume. Many of the stories have a humorous quality, not so much laugh out loud as being pastiches of various mundane mystery and other genres.

There is a great diversity in the types of stories. The characterizations and story-telling are uniformly good to outstanding. The works tend to be set in somewhat feudal cultures, as fantasy usually is, but others are quite modern or otherwise set in familiar times and places (if you credit the existence of magic.)

Worth reading both for fantasy aficionados and mystery fans.

This highly enjoyable anthology contains 20 stories by some of the best-known authors in modern fantasy (almost all female), from Roberta Gellis to Mercedes Lackey, brought together by an editor who has worked with several of them (not to mention co-writing at least two novels with the late, great Andre Norton). Despite the title, not all of the tales turn on murder (or even crime), but most do; they range from the funny (Esther Friesner's "Au Purr," in which a witch takes the form of a cat in order to learn the truth about her sister's death and watch over her young niece and nephew) to the somewhat baffling (Carole Nelson Douglas's "Special Surprise Guest Appearance By...," in which an aging Vegas stage magician meets...I'm not sure what), to the classic locked-room (Debra Doyle's "A Death in the Working," set in her MageWorlds Universe). Anyone who enjoys puzzles and the fantastical should enjoy the collection. Highly recommended.

This short story collection is a fun read, and had tales I hadn't expected from some authors I really like. Like all short story collections, some don't quite fit the overall theme very well. One story breaks one of the cardinal rules of mystery, that the mystery story was terribly incomplete, with no closure or capture. That tale plainly is part of a longer novel and was not long enough to either make a good mystery or introduce the world to new readers. Stories that combine the limitations of mysteries and fantasy are difficult to pull off, and the tale by Diane Duane and the homage by Lee and Miller are especially good.

This superb twenty collection anthology runs the mystery gamut but has the common thread as stated by Rosemary Edghill in her introduction that "a crime (preferably by murder), and magic and the supernatural had to be somehow involved". Each tale does that and though the format is short story, readers will believe in the use of magic albeit whether to commit a crime, solve a crime, or both. The contributions run the gamut from historical to modern with varying sub-genres in each. Fans of fantasy who-done-it stories will want to read MURDER BY MAGIC as a virtual who's who of authors have contributed strong works in one of the best consistent compilations of the year.

Harriet Klausner