Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Book Review: Deadly Debut




Kerry Hammond is here to review a mystery short story collection from the New York/Tri-State Chapter of SISTERS IN CRIME called, Deadly Debut.


Mysteries come in all shapes and sizes, and I love them all. I am sometimes in the mood for a historical mystery, sometimes a cozy, sometimes a thriller. And sometimes I’m in the mood for all of the above, but don’t want to get invested in three full length novels. This is when l turn to short stories. You can find short stories in mystery magazines like Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock, or you can find them in wonderful anthologies compiled by Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime. 

I recently got my hands on Deadly Debut, one of the books of short stories in the Murder New York Style series put out by the New York/Tri State Chapter of Sisters in Crime. This anthology is edited by Clare Toohey and lives up to the quality of all the others before it. The stories in Deadly Debut are well chosen and the authors include Elizabeth Zelvin, Anita Page, Lina Zeldovich, Peggy Ehrhart, Deirdre Verne, Triss Stein, and Terry Farley Moran


I would be hard-pressed to pick a favorite story from the anthology because I really enjoyed them all. Let me just say that you, as the reader, will: find a body in a closet, follow a group of kids who were told not to play in the woods, attend an evening of belly dancing at Aladdin’s Cave, and help solve the crime of the stolen exam at Hudson College. Each story takes place in the New York area, and each one is unique and entertaining. You can read one at a time and savor the rest, or you can devour them like I did and then suffer until the next anthology is published. Either way, you can’t go wrong with this compilation of great authors.




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