Murder & Other Acts of Literature: Twenty-Four Unforgettable and Chilling Stories by Some of the World's Best-Loved, Most Celebrated Writers - Hardcover

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9780312169374: Murder & Other Acts of Literature: Twenty-Four Unforgettable and Chilling Stories by Some of the World's Best-Loved, Most Celebrated Writers

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 031216937X ISBN 13: 9780312169374

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 1997

A collection of mysteries that go beyond the usual whodunit formula includes writings by Louisa May Alcott, T.H. White, John Cheever, Isabel Allende, and Edith Wharton

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From Kirkus Reviews:

Veteran anthologist Slung avoids the stuffiness attendant on her most distinguished predecessors in the crime-fiction-can-be- literature-too genre (Ellery Queen's Poetic Justice and The Literature of Crime) by loosening her definitions of both crime fiction and literature. Edith Wharton's nightmarish ``A Journey,'' Rudyard Kipling's decorously chilling ``Mary Postgate,'' and John Cheever's deceptively casual ``Montraldo'' are only marginally crime stories; only by stretching a point could the Waspish anecdotes of Evelyn Waugh and A.A. Milne, or the backstage fustian of Louisa May Alcott, be called literature. Yet the two dozen stories she's collected--which also include unexpected entries by W.S. Gilbert, T.H. White, Isak Dinesen, Eudora Welty (an exceptionally creepy little tale), William Trevor (ditto), Patrick O'Brian, Nadine Gordimer, Gabriel Garc�a M rquez, Muriel Spark, Paul Theroux, Naguib Mahfouz, Alice Walker, Isabel Allende, and Fay Weldon, as well as chestnuts by William Faulkner and James Thurber--however uneven in their melding of literature and crime, are never, ever boring. Though a better title might be Famous Authors Try Their Hands at Crime (Anthony Trollope?! Virginia Woolf?!), Slung's collection is a revelation in more ways than one. (Book-of-the- Month Club main selection) -- Copyright �1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal:

YAAA collection of short stories by authors not usually associated with the mystery genre. Though the stories certainly qualify as murder-mystery tales and have their share of criminals, they would not be considered "high crime." Haunting images can be found in William Trevor's "The Hotel of the Idle Moon," in which an elderly servant and mistress are reduced to garret-living in her beautiful country home after stranded travelers fast-talk them out of their residence. In Naguib Mahfouz's "By a Person Unknown," the director-general of a locality, frustrated by the inability of the police to catch a serial killer, decides that if the killings are no longer mentioned in the media, life can return to normal. Alice Walker's "How Did I Get Away with Killing One of the Biggest Lawyers in the State? It Was Easy" is one of those delicious, savory tales of ironic justice. The works of 22 other authors, including Isak Dinesen, A.A. Milne, Rudyard Kipling, Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, and James Thurber, can be found in this stellar collection that beautifully blends literature and murder.APam Spencer, formerly at Fairfax County Public Schools, VA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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