It’s a bit tricky to write blurbs for short story collections, especially loosely themed ones. So, here’s a range of stories from the past forty years of the Crime Writers’ Association, collated by Martin Edwards.

The authors in question are Anne Perry, Christine Poulson, Andrew Taylor, Amy Myers, Judith Cutler, Gillian Linscott, Martin Edwards, Bernie Crosthwaite, Catherine Aird, Simon Brett, Yvonne Eve Walus, John Harvey, Kate Ellis, Zoe Sharp, Bill Knox, Cath Staincliffe, Liza Cody, Ann Cleeves, and Peter Lovesey. You may have heard of one or two of them…

The crime short story is a funny beast. As a fan of the mystery side of crime, it can sometimes be a bit of a lottery. These days, it’s very rare to read ones that are actual whodunnits – Christie and Carr wrote them, and more recently Edward D Hoch wrote a lot of them – but more often than not, the mystery short story is a tale with a twist. And there are a few common ones that do turn up. The point-of-view character is actually the murderer, for example. That one appears twice in this selection…

There are one or two whodunnits here, notably Who Killed Adonis? by Amy Myers, although the setting – Mount Olympus – and the sleuth – Aphrodite – does probably move it away from the traditional side of the genre. So with all that, and my acknowledged preference for the whodunnit, you probably think I didn’t enjoy this selection.

You’d be wrong though. Martin had forty years’ worth of stories to choose from for this beautifully packaged book, and he has chosen well.

The opening story of murder in the trenches by Anne Perry, more famed for her Victorian series, is wonderful, especially the denouement as the sleuth wrestles with how to find justice in the situation. The quality continues throughout – I’d say I enjoyed at least sixteen of the nineteen tales, which is a very high hit-rate for such a collection. Highlights are Kate Ellis’ Les Inconnus, which has more twists in it than an exceptionally twisty thing and Martin’s own War Rations – I really don’t want to know what made him think of this one. He seems such a nice man…

It ends up with Arabella’s Answer by Peter Lovesey, a lovely way to end the collection with a tale told via an agony aunt’s letters’ page with a really clever twist. I’ve a collection of Peter’s short stories to read soon and this has really whetted my appetite for them.

All in all, this is a really enjoyable collection of stories and packaged so beautifully by Flame Tree Publishing. An ideal present for the crime fiction fan in the family – or for you, obviously…