Twelve Tales of Murder (Oxford Twelves S.)

Rating:
Summary: The Inventiveness of Murder
Review: Jack Adrian's anthology of murder stories in the Oxford Twelves series is an agreeably fiendish collection supplying enough chills and thrills to last through many a dark and stormy night. As usual, the anthologists in this series comb through the 19th and early 20th centuries for their wares and the authors represented are both famous and obscure. The gruesomeness of the murder methods in "An Illustration of Modern Science" (1896) would meet with the approval of Hannibal Lecter himself, and Conan Doyle would be hard pressed to conjure up a more sinister portrait of London than the one we see in "Fogbound" (1903). As for the disquieting "Portrait of a Murderer" (1942), it leaves the reader with a completely new perspective on the meaning of fatherly love. I am a big fan of the Oxford Twelves series (I have them all) and heartily recommend this book as well.