Women on the Case

Rating:
Summary: 20 Mediocre Tales, 6 Good Ones
Review: An avid VI Warshawsky and Sara Paretsky fan, I ran out VI novels to read ... So I grabbed this one thinking that Sara would pick some interesting or controversial subjects.

Sara didn't let me down. There are six jewels in this 26 story meat pie. Unhappily the majority are made of "mystery meat".

The six Jewels make me want to seek out other works by their authors. They are:

Nevada Barr's *Beneath the Lilies*, an excellent piece of short fiction. Part drama and part mystery, it equals a Paretsky or a Sayers tale of the same length.

Nancy Pickard's *A Rock and a Hard Place* is a shot of rye in the eye, sap to the back of the head, Phyllis Marlowe detective yarn.

Sara's own *Publicity Stunts* is a good chapter in the VI Warshawsky saga. Its only flaw is that it hurtles to a conclusion in four paragraphs. I prefer a well-paced unraveling, not the abrupt crashing-of-a-meteorite-through-the-ceiling type of ending. Must have been getting close to press time.

Andrea Smith's *A Lesson in Murder* is a good, by-the-books whodunit.

*The Baroness* by Amanda Cross is very Dorothy Sayers-like in that we get a lesson in art forgery while trying to keep up with the detective as she solves the case.

Susan Dunlap spins an entertaining story about a Private Eye of the Afterworld in *I'll Get Back to You*.

Linda Grant's *Hamlet's Dilemma* ingeniously uses literature as a tool for detection.

I rated this collection low because there are twenty mediocre or bad stories in the muck. Even the collected stories of Hemingway have a stinker or two among them, but over 75%? Ugh!

Sara would've been better off using the six stories I mentioned, spent more time on *Publicity Stunt's* ending and chosen a few of the European tales to add flair and spice. That would have made for a more balanced collection.

Rating:
Summary: Morose and Depressing
Review: This book is filled with stories by many of my favorite authors, which is why I purchased it. All of the stories are good mysteries; none of the endings are overly obvious, and most of the outcomes left an impression to be thought about later. (The picture of Heaven and Salvation in Susan Dunlap's "I'll Get Back to You" has started many thought-provoking conversations.) The reason I would highly praise the individual stories yet rate the book so low is that as a group the stories are depressing. Even the relatively happy endings are tainted with sadness, failure, fear or misery. Being the owner of two fickle little kittens I still cry occasionally when I think of "A Witch and Her Cats" by Antonia Fraser. I realize that it is the purpose of each of these women to reach out and impact her audience, but the combination of stories in this book turns the pen into an arrow, piercing the soul. It is a rare occurrance, but I have given my copy away.