First Cases 3: New and Classic Tales of Detection

Robert Randisi has succeeded masterfully in pulling together a single volume of works that provides his reader with a brief, thorough, and excellent overview of contemporary mysteries. The stories in this collection feature the "first" cases of many of today's leading sleuths. Unlike many short story anthologies, there is a great range in tone and subject matter in this FIRST CASES volume. Some stories are cozies while others are hardboiled. All fit somewhere across our genre's spectrum.I was pointed to this short story collection by my favorite mystery bookseller. I told her I needed a fresh text for this upcoming semester's course on writing mystery short stories that I regularly teach in the California State University system. Students in that class usually have a wide range of writing interests, and FIRST CASES--VOLUME 3 provides models that can apply to their varying literary efforts. It features stories by Tony Hillerman, Gar Anthony Haywood, Laura Lippman, Lawrence Block, Maxine O'Callaghan, and Anne Perry, among others. There is even a Talmage Powell story dating from the mystery genre's pulp fiction years. I am quite pleased with this collection, and it is now among my course's required texts when this semester's course begins soon.

These morsels are ideal for bedtime delectation. To quote "Death of the Mallory Queen" narrator Chip Harrison, the `Archie' of Lawrence Block's laugh-out-loud take-off on Nero Wolfe and assorted generic conventions: "If this were novel length I'd say what each of them was wearing and who scowled and who looked interested, but Haig says there's not enough plot here for a novel and that you have to be more concise in short stories ... ." Lack of complexity and lightning-quick resolutions aside, pleasures are many. First published in 1949, Talmage Powell's "Her Dagger Before Me" reads like a picture postcard of the era come to life on the page. "Chee's Witch" spread lore. In "Snow," a new story, Stuart Kaminsky's Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov is a uniformed police whose future depends on his ability to woo his damaged left leg. Stories are arranged by age, from masters to the "new breed," the former being primarily male [with the exception of Maxine O'Callaghan, creator of Delilah West,according the editor, the first modern female P.I.] and the latter being women. The modern female sleuths -- Shugak, Matelli, Plum, Monaghan -- are fearless about defining for themselves the meaning of guilt and justice.

This book is just as the name suggests, new, classic tales of detection. It fulfills your need and desire for such stories. It is a must for mystery lovers.