Editor Grisham points out that as \u201cmankind\u2019s first crime,\u201d murder holds a fascination for readers that no other misdeed can match. So it\u2019s appropriate that no less than 18 of the 20 stories include a killing, contemplated or committed. But murder is not always the main event. Often the tricky part is figuring out how not to get killed, as in Casey Stegman\u2019s \u201cEffie\u2019s Oasis,\u201d Tracy Falenwolfe\u2019s \u201cJamming at Jollies,\u201d and Billie Livingston\u2019s \u201cSame Old Song.\u201d And as series editor Otto Penzler points out, deduction and detection have in recent years taken a back seat to what he calls \u201cthe psychology of crime.\u201d Stories like Erika Krouse\u2019s \u201cEat My Moose\u201d and April Kelly\u2019s \u201cThe Art of Disappearance\u201d place the delicacy of human relationships front and center. Family ties also loom large, as in Shelagh Smith\u2019s \u201cSnapshot\u201d and Tom Larsen\u2019s \u201cThe Other Brother.\u201d And marital strife is always a motivator for misbehavior, as in James Hearn\u2019s \u201cTotality,\u201d Craig Faustus Buck\u2019s \u201cHome Game,\u201d and Sean McCluskey\u2019s jolting \u201cThe Secret Menu.\u201d This year\u2019s volume fulfills its promise of originality while honoring the time-tested formula for good mysteries: It shows readers characters they feel they know and care about doing things they couldn\u2019t possibly have anticipated.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Editor Grisham points out that as \u201cmankind\u2019s first crime,\u201d murder holds a fascination for readers that no other misdeed can match. So it\u2019s appropriate that no less than 18 of the 20 stories include a killing, contemplated or committed. But murder is not always the main event. Often the tricky part is figuring out how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4194,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4193"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}