Midsummer, the time when the days cease to lengthen and the nights begin to crawl back, a celebration of summer despite the approach of the darkness. What better time to set tales of murder and mayhem?

Nineteen short stories commissioned by Martin Edwards from the membership of the Crime Writers’ Association – well, eighteen and one he wrote himself, not sure you can commission a book from yourself – all with the setting of Midsummer. And all with the central them of murder…

You might notice that I don’t review short story collections very often and even then, they’re usually collections of stories written by the same person. And that person is usually Edward D Hoch. The reason for that is that there’s a lot of variety in the content of the mystery short story, and I know what I’m getting from Hoch.

I’m very much a plot-oriented reader – a strong atmosphere to support the plot is ideal as well, but I like to read a murder mystery. And many collections of mysteries tend to include stories that I wouldn’t class as mysteries per se. If you’re going to write a short piece focussing on character, you’re doing well if it does end with “and then it turned out that I’m a murderer” or “and then the person I’m talking to killed me”. These stories can work very well, but I’ll be honest, that’s rare. Oh, and ghosts. They seem to have more of a free pass in short stories too…

So, like many short story collections, this is a mixed bag. I mentioned the rarity of the above structure working, and while it is present several times here in many shapes and forms, there are two excellent versions of it – I won’t name the authors as it’d give the game away, so sorry for the lack of praise.

I do wonder how someone goes about ordering the stories in the collection, as after an interesting start from Len Tyler, the collection kicks in around the second half. The stand out stories – and I’m showing my preferences as they are mostly whodunnits – are towards the end of the book, with the very best coming from friends-of-the-blog Victoria Dowd and Tom Mead, both of them impossible crimes, the latter featuring Tom’s sleuth Joseph Spector.

All in all, an interesting collection with the strengths and flaws of any such collection, but there aren’t that many flaws and the strengths more than make up for them, as they are very good indeed.

The book is very pretty too…