Customer Reviews

Murder on the Menu

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Edited by Carol-Lynn Rössel Waugh, Martin H. Greenberg, and Isaac Asimov, MURDER ON THE MENU (1984) contains 16 stories by 15 different authors, plus an introduction by Isaac Asimov titled "Poison!" The stories are "The Chicken Soup Kid" by R. L. Stevens (a pen name of Edward D. Hoch); "The Case of the Shaggy Caps" by Ruth Rendell; "Poison à la Carte" by Rex Stout; "Garden of Evil" by Carol Cail; "The Specialty of the House" by Stanley Ellin; "Lamb to the Slaughter" by Roald Dahl; "When No Man Pursueth" by Isaac Asimov; "Two Bottles of Relish" by Lord Dunsany; "The Theft of the Used Teabag" by Edward D. Hoch; "The Refugees" by T. S. Stribling; "Recipe for a Happy Marriage" by Nedra Tyre; "The Deadly Egg" by Janwillem van de Wetering; "The Norwegian Apple Mystery" by James Holding; "Gideon and the Chestnut Vendor" by J. J. Marric (a pen name of John Creasey); "The Same Old Grind" by Bill Pronzini; and "Dogsbody" by Francis M. Nevins, Jr.

Asimov's introduction is very informative, explaining the scientific reasons that poisons work as they do; the sole error is that he says, "we present you with a score of stories" (i.e., 20), which is four more than the anthology actually contains. Of the sixteen stories, the two best in my view are the Nero Wolfe story by Rex Stout and the Dr. Poggioli story by T. S. Stribling. Slightly below these, I would place the seven stories of Ruth Rendell, Stanley Ellin, Roald Dahl, Isaac Asimov, Lord Dunsany, James Holding, and Francis M. Nevins, Jr.

Four stories I considered somewhat flawed for various reasons included both of Edward D. Hoch's, Janwillem van de Wetering's, and Bill Pronzini's. And three I felt were a waste of time were by Carol Cail, Nedra Tyre, and John Creasey.

Another way of summarizing my views is that I've given out two A's, seven B's, four C's, and three F's. Among the factors considered are the authors' cleverness and originality, their ability to pace themselves and stay on track, the appropriateness and vividness of the styles in their narration and dialogue, and the plausibility of the various characters and events within their stories.

A large number of these stories are fair-play detective stories. A few stories are left deliberately inconclusive, with the killers either undetected or otherwise escaping justice by various means. A few others might be classified as horror stories, and a rather large percentage of these 16 works contain (as one might expect) instances of cannibalism.

Incidentally, legally a book's title cannot be copyrighted, and so there are many mystery novels that have been titled MURDER ON THE MENU--as well as a very similar anthology edited by Peter Haining, titled MURDER ON THE MENU (1991), which contains 27 stories (including three that are in the Waugh-Greenberg-Asimov book).