Sisters in Crime, an international consortium of women and men whose reason for being is the propagation and betterment of women who write mysteries, is at it again with A Deadly Dozen: Tales of Murder from Los Angeles, its third anthology (following 1997's Desserticide: Desserts to Die For and 1998's Murder by Thirteen) of largely female murder and mayhem. Within its 224 pages you'll find all of the blood, revenge, culprits, and calamities that you'd expect from such a collection, and most of it is fine indeed. The problem, of course, is that it's nearly impossible to limn such ditties; most of them, given their length, rely on surprise endings that dish up the mystery in a matter of paragraphs--without giving away their payload. Suffice it to say, however, that Jamie Wallace's genre-bending "Driven to Kill" is a 10-page well-I'll-be-darned; Phil Mann's "Touch of a Vanish'd Hand" deals nicely with the locked-room-mystery wheeze--complete with a rotund and vaguely European mathematics professor with a penchant for detection; and Lisa Seidman's Over My Shoulder will, in 16 pages, more thoroughly creep out your inner child than many a novel 20 times as long:
He was standing right next to the sofa bed. I could sense his shadow lying over me. I stayed frozen in place, my eyes glued shut.Shove a copy in your bag and keep it handy. A Deadly Dozen's sharpened points make a dandy weapon for killing time. --Michael HudsonHe did nothing for a moment; I could tell he was just staring at me. I prayed he'd go back out the door; I prayed Mom would come home now.
But then he reached down, hands tugging at the afghan. I gripped the edge of the blanket and held on. Would he still believe I was asleep?
"It's just you and me, Susie. I'm not going to hurt you. I love you."
Review
A perfect book for curling up in an overstuffed chair before a crackling fire, iron poker close at hand, just in case... -- ForeWord Magazine, August 2000
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