Customer Reviews

Twisted: Selected Unabridged Stories of Jeffery Deaver

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Deaver has been my favorite mystery/thriller novel writer for several years so, when I saw this short story collection by him, I figured I had to give it a shot. Glad I did! He doesn't call this collection "Twisted" by accident. Each story features a devious, crazy or grin-inducing twist and the book is a quick read.

If I have any criticism of this book it is that, after a while, I started (often unconsciously) applying mental energy to trying to figure out what twist was coming in each new story instead of paying full attention to the story. It bugged me, but not THAT much. The stories are not all the same level of quality but most are very enjoyable. I recall only one that I didn't think should have been in the book. Being a special fan of Deaver's Rhyme character, I especially liked the story featuring Rhyme & Sachs.

This would be a great beach read...quick and in short spurts and not as grisly or scary as his novels.

This is a collection of short stories, all of which I found thoroughly enjoyable. They are all very much twisted, so truth in advertising lives! I won't go into detailed summaries of all the stories, but they all have a neat little twist at the end.

My favorite story would probably be "Fall Guy" with it's very satisfying twist. But I found "The Weekender" and "Gone Fishing" very chillingly disturbing and "Triangle" probably has the most unexpected ending.

I had never read anything by this author before - this is the first - but I absolutely must get Garden of Beasts now, as there is an excerpt at the end of this book and I made the mistake of reading it. Oooh, those publishers know their business, don't they?

Even though I have read several novels by Jeffrey Deaver, I had never come across any of his short stories and it was a nice surprise to discover the high quality of this collection. Most stories are superb, and since I have not read any of them before I was delighted with the book. But it is only fair to warn those people who have read short stories by this author in the past, because there is only one story that has not been published before. The new story, "The Christmas Present", is the one I liked less in the whole book. It seems that the author (or someone at the publishing house) had the idea to introduce a new story when there was not sufficient time left to maintain the level of quality. The story is considerable worse than any of the others. It looks as if Deaver had run out of ideas and decided to use his "usual" characters, Rhyme and Sachs, in a failed attempt to salvage the task.

The author explains in the introduction the difference between a novel and a short story, besides length, describing the short story as a "genre" in which the writer is authorized to "cheat" the reader. According to Deaver, in a novel the reader spends time and emotional energy in getting to know the characters, and therefore, it would be unfair to present an unpleasant ending. But in a short story "all bets are off" and the author will do everything in his power to shock the reader, leaving him/her awed and going back in the story to see if it is really possible that he/she assumed facts that weren't really there. This is why the title "Twisted" fits the theme of the stories extremely well.

For those of you that have read Deaver's short stories in the past and are not sure if it is worthwhile to buy this book here is a list of the stories with a brief description:

1.Without Jonathan - A woman sets up a blind date in an attempt to keep on going with her life after losing her husband.
2.The Weekender - A theft goes awry and the robbers take a very persuasive salesman as their hostage.
3.For Services Rendered - A psychoanalyst focuses his energies on one of his patients when he is bored with his trivial practice.
4.Beautiful - For Kary being beautiful is a curse; she has to go to great lengths to escape the man that is stalking her.
5.The Fall Guy - After being saved by a "knight in a shinning armor", Carolyn presents him with a business proposition.
6.Eye to Eye - Two police officers investigate a heist in Virginia and find themselves interrogating a potential witness they knew from high school.
7.Triangle - Pete plans to commit the perfect murder based on the book "Triangle".
8.All the World's a Stage - Set in the times of Shakespeare, this is the story of a man that wants revenge after his father was framed for a theft and murdered as a result.
9.Gone fishing - Disregarding his daughter's warnings, a man goes fishing in the area where a serial killer has attacked in the past.
10.Nocturne - A music-lover police officer gets involved in the investigation of a stolen Stradivarius after failing to stop the thief during the act.
11.Lesser-included offense - A wealthy killer cannot go to jail and therefore, does not accept any of the deals proposed by the district attorney. The result is a very interesting trial.
12.The Blank Card - Obsessed about his wife's loyalty, Dennis decides to check-up on her and finds an envelope with a Christmas card bearing no name or address.
13.The Christmas Present - Lincoln Rhyme and Amanda Sachs investigate the disappearance of a woman and get involved in a very special Christmas present.
14.Together - Manko tells a friend about the love of his life, how her father interfered to keep them apart and how he had to go to great lengths to stay with her.
15.The Widow of Pine Creek - After losing her husband in a fishing accident, a woman is left alone to manage their business and requests the assistance of a banker she met at a bar.
16.The Kneeling Soldier - Gwen's parents had protected her throughout her life from the usual unpleasantness children and adolescents go through. Now there is a guy stalking her and, and they find themselves in a difficult to handle situation.

I really liked this one. It's been a long time since I've read any short story collection, and I'm glad I read this one. Actually didn't read it, I did this one on audio, there were different narrators for the stories lending different voices and all well done.

Although the theme of hiring hit men was repeated in some of these stories, they all kept me guessing. Also since they were all with twist endings I anticipated what might happen but didn't often see what was coming.

This is my first Jeffery Deaver book. I had avoided them since I HATED the movie of "Bone Collector" but I now want to read some more of his books; I'm hoping that Hollywood ruined a good writer's work.

I LOVED this book! What an outstanding collection of stories. I loved this book so much, I made copies of some of the stories so that I could pretend I was working when I was actually reading! Not only did each one surprise me at the end, but all of them held my attention. Very well written, I will add Jeffery Deaver to my favorite authors list and continue to read his work.

My absolute favorite story in the collection had to be Triangle, although that is a hard choice given the quality and suspense of each story.

I highly recommend this book!

Having proven he is one of the masters of modern suspense novels, Deaver digs into some of his short stories for a pleasing sixteen story collection, with twists galore. Although thematically many of them are very similar (particularly the cheating spouse thing), they are all fun and carry their own distorted twists.
WITHOUT JONATHAN - a wife plans to murder husband; THE WEEKENDER - a pharmacy robbery yields unusual results; FOR SERVICES RENDERED - a woman seeks psychiatric help in dealing with her husband's intent to drive her insane; BEAUTIFUL - a woman takes desperate measures to off set a stalker; THE FALL GUY - just who's the fall guy in this one?; EYE TO EYE - a nerd seeks revenge on those who bullied him; TRIANGLE - a man uses a criminologist book to seek justice; ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE when Shakespeare helps out a murderer; GONE FISHING is a real twister with a little girl afraid for her daddy's well being; NOCTURNE is a nifty tale of revenge; LESSER INCLUDED OFFENSE brings justice in a roundabout way; THE BLANK CARD gives a husband reason to suspect his wife's infidelity; THE CHRISTMAS PRESENT is the only new story, a Lincoln Rhyme mystery, with a surprise ending; TOGETHER in which we meet a man with undying devotion; THE WIDOW OF PINE CREEK has a widow seeking help from a handsome stranger to settle her deceasesd husbands business problems; and THE KNEELING SOLDIER finds us again with a stalker and an enterprising young woman.
Deaver knows his craft well, and I think you'll find these stories more consistently entertaining than some other novelists who have ventured here.

Twisted is a selection of short stories by thriller writer Jeffrey Deaver. Deaver points out in the intro that one advantage to short stories is you can alter the ending or the characters to make the story a little darker or depressing than a novel. Since the reader only invests a few minutes into a short story, they don't expect a happy or tidy ending. All of the stories in this collection are suspensful and involve a twist of some sort.

For Services Rendered and Triangle are probably the two best. They stand out because the of the twist. All stories are similar in that they only involve a few characters. So when the story goes in one direction, you are correct in assuming that the twist will involve the story going in the other direction at the end.

This book was easy to read and may perhaps persuade me to pick up another Jeffrey Deaver novel. I'm all for twists and turns, but for some reason did not enjoy the Empty Chair. I haven't read any more Deaver since. I don't know if its worth paying money for a short story collection. But if you are a Deaver fan, or a suspense fan, I'm sure you'll enjoy this collection of stories.

I am a big fan of Jeffrey Deaver, I think he is very clever and original in his work, and deserves the readership that he has garnered over the last few years.

Yet this collection did little for me. I tried to like the stories and they were at times ok, but I just found myself trying to guess the sting in each tale and not really relating to the story at all. The stories were not enough for me to get involved and to care about what was happening.

This is for the ultra-serious Deaver fan, while others would do better to look at his Lincoln Rhyme series which are brilliant.

Good value this - sixteen short stories instead of one, but some of them might have been stretched out to become full-length novels by other authors. They're not great tales, but collectively they make a compulsive case for you to 'add to basket'. Apparently some have criticised the Olde English tale "All the World is a Stage" (which includes Shakespeare as one of the characters) but I thought it was very authentic given the American hand that wrote it! There's also a mini Lincoln Rhyme story, and several tales in which the baddies get away with it! A good way to introduce yourself to Jeffrey Deaver, if you're not a fan already.

If you've read any other books by Jeffrey Deaver (and I've read most of them), you know what a strange (OK, weird) mind this author has. This book is a collection of his short stories and includes an original story about a favorite character of mine, Lincoln Rhyme.

Each story is, of course, carefully crafted with a twist or turn of fate. How can he get so devious in just 20-30 pages per story? Characters include an ad exec, William Shakespeare, a beautiful woman, a boy and other assorted personalities. Settings include olde England, New York City, the New England countryside and the eastern shore. You never know if the good guy will win, the bad guy, or what sneaky outcome the author might have conjured up. You're quickly engrossed as each story begins, and you never know who's evil or who's nuts. And do be sure to read Mr. D's introduction. It's a fun, quick, must read.