This milestone collection of forty-two stories by the biggest and most prestigious names in the mystery field creates a fictional mirror of our fears, our need for justice - or revenge - and our violent world. James Elroy and Andrew Vachss surpass the mere hard edge to depict a bloody, pitiless world of criminals and avengers. Sue Grafton uses her P.I. Kinsey Millhone to balance the scales of justice in the shotgun killing of a cocaine dealer when the authorities can't or won't. And Sara Paretsky brings back Philip Marlowe to solve a classic California case of double murder in a brilliant homage to Raymond Chander. All the stories in this unparalleled treasury represent crime writing that no longer follows the rules of yesterday's cozies and detective fiction. Evil still lurks there, but there are no sanitized off-stage murders solved by aloof paragons of deduction. Instead we have vigorous, ironic, disturbingly realistic and undeniably alive tales that are remarkably diverse and riveting. A mystery lover's dream.
Author
Jerome Charyn is an award-winning American author. With more than 50 published works, Charyn has earned a long-standing reputation as an inventive and prolific chronicler of real and imagined American life. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon calls him "one of the most important writers in American literature." New York Newsday hailed Charyn as "a contemporary American Balzac," and the Los Angeles Times described him as "absolutely unique among American writers." Since the 1964 release of Charyn's first novel, Once Upon a Droshky, he has published thirty novels, three memoirs, eight graphic novels, two books about film, short stories, plays, and works of non-fiction. Two of his memoirs were named New York Times Book of the Year. Charyn has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He received the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was named Commander of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture. Charyn is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Film Studies at the American University of Paris. In addition to writing and teaching, Charyn is a tournament table tennis player, once ranked in the top ten percent of players in France. Noted novelist Don DeLillo called Charyn's book on table tennis, Sizzling Chops & Devilish Spins, "The Sun Also Rises of ping-pong." Charyn's most recent novel, Jerzy, was described by The New Yorker as a "fictional fantasia" about the life of Jerzy Kosinski, the controversial author of The Painted Bird. In 2010, Charyn wrote The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson, an imagined autobiography of the renowned poet, a book characterized by Joyce Carol Oates as a "fever-dream picaresque." Charyn lives in New York City. He's currently working with artists Asaf and Tomer Hanuka on an animated television series based on his Isaac Sidel crime novels.
