Recommended reading - A New Omnibus of Crime (2005)

 

A New Omnibus of Crime (2005)

Edited by Tony Hillerman and Rosemary Herbert.

Contents:

Introduction; The Man Who Knew How; The Girl with the Silver Eyes; Red Wind; The Wench Is Dead; Gone Girl; The Couple Next Door; By the Scruff of the Soul; A Poison That Leaves No Trace; Photo Finish; The Crime of Miss Oyster Brown; Red Clay; Barking at Butterflies; Running Out of Dog; Hostages; When the Women Come Out to Dance; Flowers That Bloom in the Spring; Woodrow Wilsons Necktie; Loopy; Great Aunt Allies Fly Papers; First Lead Gasser; Chee’s Witch; Breathe Deep; Rumpole and the Bubble Reputation; The Hanged Man; The Holly and the Poison Ivy; Copycat; He Loved to Go for Drives with His Father; Credits; Index.

Description:

Three-quarters of a century ago, Dorothy L. Sayers compiled the classic anthology The Omnibus of Crime, a definitive collection of short fiction that brought together crime and mystery works from the Apocryphal Scriptures to whodunits from the 1920s.

Now, reflecting the explosive developments in the genre, Tony Hillerman and Rosemary Herbert celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of that book's publication with A New Omnibus of Crime. 

Like Sayers's volume, this new book is envisioned as a vehicle carrying stories the editors think represent the best in crime and mystery writing in our time. Selections also reflect the tastes of Contributing Editors Sue Grafton and Jeffery Deaver, both of whom have stories in this volume.

The anthology begins with a story by Sayers herself; other giants of the genre including Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, are also represented among the twenty-seven works. Hillerman and Herbert introduce each story and place each selection in the context of the literary history of the genre.

Several of the writers confide the circumstances and real-life happenings that inspired them to write their stories. The book concludes with stories by Jeffery Deaver, Alexander McCall Smith, and Catherine Aird – all in print for the first time here.

While mystery writers in Sayer’s day shunned the love interest as a distraction from a puzzling plot, some of these stories show how the depiction of love – thwarted or otherwise – can effectively enrich crime writing. In the last seven-plus decades, the use of a distinctly regional voice has also revitalized the genre, as our selection of stories shows.

And while Sayer’s contemporaries looked at crime as something that could be solved and “tidied up,” writers here take the view that the effects of crime linger like a stain even after a solution has been reached. Illustrating another more recent trend, pets romp through these pages, some in surprising ways.

Like passengers on an omnibus, the stories that keep company here are colorful and mixed. Some will inspire laughter while others will incite chills. All will keep readers turning the pages.

We invite you to hop on, take a ride, and get to know them.