Murder for Revenge: 12 New Original Stories - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385317158 ISBN 13: 9780385317153

Publisher: Delacorte Press, 1998

Synopsis

A high school wallflower cooks up justice Ó la carte at her 20th reunion...A submissive wife sails her domineering husband straight to hell...A man disposes of his enemy in a murder only a writer could commit.

This irresistible collection of original stories was born of a deliciously wicked idea: ask twelve of America's best writers to explore a single subject--people willing, often gleefully so, to kill for revenge. The result is a star-studded gathering of fiction's finest, and an infinitely satisfying banquet of...Murder for Revenge.

In Lawrence Block's chilling contribution, a serial killer transforms one victim's brother into his greatest defender--to his eternal regret! Revenge more immediate sizzles in Mary Higgins Clark's "Power Play," as a dashing ex-president and his congresswoman wife outwit terrorists hunting bigger game. Phillip Margolin's career criminal has an alibi to die for--which becomes a nail in the coffin of self-defense. Joyce Carol Oates administers revenge most satisfying in "Murder-Two" as a brilliant lawyer defends her first criminal client--her worst enemy's son. And in Peter Straub's "Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff," a betrayed husband discovers that if you have to ask the price of revenge, you can't afford to pay for it.

Here is delicious retribution in these and seven more superb, all-new stories by Thomas H. Cook, Vicki Hendricks, Joan Hess, Judith Kelman, Eric Lustbader, David Morrell, and Shel Silverstein: America's favorite writers gathered together in one unforgettable volume--a wickedly entertaining exploration of sweet, cold-blooded revenge.


Otto Penzler is the owner of The Mysterious Bookshops in New York City, Los Angeles, and London. The founder of The Mysterious Press and Otto Penzler Books, he is also the editor of the acclaimed collection Murder for Love. He received an Edgar Award for the Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, and was honored by the Mystery Writers of America in 1994 with the Ellery Queen Award for his contributions in the publishing field. He lives in New York City.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

l wallflower cooks up justice Ó la carte at her 20th reunion...A submissive wife sails her domineering husband straight to hell...A man disposes of his enemy in a murder only a writer could commit.<br><br>This irresistible collection of original stories was born of a deliciously wicked idea: ask twelve of America's best writers to explore a single subject--people willing, often gleefully so, to kill for revenge. The result is a star-studded gathering of fiction's finest, and an infinitely satisfying banquet of...<i>Murder for Revenge.</i><br><br>In Lawrence Block's chilling contribution, a serial killer transforms one victim's brother into his greatest defender--to his eternal regret! Revenge more immediate sizzles in Mary Higgins Clark's "Power Play," as a dashing ex-president and his congresswoman wife outwit terrorists hunting bigger game. Phillip Margolin's career criminal has an alibi to die for--which becomes a nail in the coffin of self-defense. Joyce Carol Oate

Reviews

Once you're aware of the rubric the title announces--tit for tat--you know a lot about the plots of most of these dozen new stories, more than you would have known about the plots of the stories in Penzler's Murder for Love (1996), since the possibilities within these present confines are so well-worn. Mostly, you have a choice between the turning worm (Vicki Hendricks, Joan Hess, Judith Kelman, Eric Lustbader, David Morrell) and the biter bit (Peter Straub, in a ghoulish hundred-page remake of Melville's ``Bartleby''). A few of the contributors go further. Phillip Margolin adds some welcome ingenuity; Lawrence Block and Joyce Carol Oates put unexpected spins on their stories, as does Shel Silverstein on his poem, that keep you guessing; Mary Higgins Clark, in a Perils-of-Pauline tale of international intrigue, seems to be playing with another deck entirely. But only Thomas H. Cook's somber ``Fatherhood'' does something genuinely new with the old formula of revenge served cold. More predictable, then, than the tales in Murder for Love (1996), though the level of professionalism is more consistent. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Penzler, the founder of Mysterious Press and owner of the Mysterious Bookshop (in New York, Los Angeles, and London), has established himself as one of the premier crime-fiction anthologists at work today. Murder for Love (1996) lodged a high-water mark for quality mystery collections, and this year's entry isn't far behind. Revenge comprises 12 never-before-published stories from an illustrious assortment of authors ranging from genre giants (Lawrence Block, Mary Higgins Clark, Joan Hess) to drop-ins from the mainstream (Joyce Carol Oates) to the unclassifiable (Shel Silverstein). Revenge as a subject may be a bit more distancing than love, focusing on obsession more than passion, but these stories work the topic for all its worth. The jewel in the crown is difficult to identify, but one strong candidate is Vicki Hendricks' "West End," in which a sailing trip offers a fed-up wife the opportunity she needs to give her control-freak husband the comeuppance he deserves. A richly entertaining theme anthology. Bill Ott

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction
by Otto Penzler  

Is there a more human emotion than revenge?  In fact, does any other life-form known to us engage in revenge, or even consider it?

Animals kill other animals for food, or self-defense, or for power, for rank within the community.  But for revenge?  No.

Humans, on the other hand, have engaged in this activity through all of recorded history.  There have been many motivations for seeking revenge--political and financial, for example--but it is unlikely that any desire for revenge has been more frequently dragged from the center of a person's soul than the anguish of lost love.

Whether that love is taken away by a decision of the beloved or surreptitiously stolen by a rival lover, or heinously and permanently erased by a murderer of that love object, the passion for revenge springs readily into the heart to avenge that greatest of all losses.  Power and money can often be acquired anew, but a lost love is almost always gone forever, and the frustration of that stolen joy may easily suggest the notion of vengeance.

Now, it is common for good and gentle people to whisper calmly that such thoughts should be banished from the mind.  What good, they ask, can come of it?  Seeking vengeance cannot return the lost, stolen, diminished, or vanished object of desire.

True, of course, else animals would certainly engage in acts of vengeance to retrieve their slaughtered pups or chicks or whatever their dead and consumed offspring are called.  Mates of those once beloved that have served as meals for their predators would surely find a way to avenge their grief if they instinctively knew it would serve a useful purpose.  But that is a pragmatist's view of revenge and has no bearing on this matter.

As there are levels of all emotions, so there are levels of revenge and the desire--indeed, the need--for it.  We are not concerned here with the hard foul on a basketball court that requires an  even harder foul at the opposite end of the court.  This book isn't about a petty slight that inspires an immediate response of an equally trivial nature.

No, here we are dealing with wrongs of such magnitude that the heart fills with bile and hatred until it overflows.  Such venomous fury cannot be controlled and the only suitable response is the most extreme that a man or woman can deliver: murder, or perhaps more accurately, death, because it is possible that revenge is proper and necessary and the word murder hints strongly at wrongdoing.

The tricky part of being a single force of policeman, judge, jury, and executioner is the lack of checks and balances.  There is no voice of reason, no softening influence of distance, no notion of charity.  When the white-hot lava of hate spews out of the heart, the injured has no focus beyond revenge and is blind to any other consideration.

"Vengeance is mine; I will repay."  Well, it's a pretty clear thought and it glows like the brightest neon on the brain of the avenger.  There are some, of course, who recall that this was said (or at least quoted as having been said) by the Lord, not by an out-of-control, grief-consumed human being who may not be best able to plot the most appropriate course of action.

Murder for Revenge offers different points of view.  Some stories suggest (well, no, actually they shout) that revenge inevitably doubles back to the vengeful, causing greater harm than the initial injury.  Other authors illustrate the comfort and justice that can be derived from unleashing the tethered rage of the innocent victim.  And some even suggest that there's something to be said for going either way, neither way being flawless; some might say this approach is kind of wimpy, but it's pretty much the way the world works, if you ask me.

But see for yourself the many nuances of revenge offered in this wonderful (I can say that because I didn't write it) book.  Shel Silverstein's story/poem/tale/fable/whatever is not unlike John Dickson Carr's locked-room lecture, in which he offers more varieties of a solution to a complex problem than most people dare dream about.  Peter Straub became so mesmerized with the endlessly delicious possibilities of revenge that his short story stretched into a memorable novella.  Thomas H. Cook said he hadn't written a short story in such a long time that he didn't know if he could even do it again and, within fifteen minutes of nonstop eating, drinking, and talking, came up with the extraordinary little gem that awaits you.  David Morrell said he had just finished a story that was based on a real-life figure, causing him such outrage that he had to write it as a piece of fiction to free himself from the anger that injustice instills in some.

However you feel about revenge, you will find a story in these pages that will support your view, and another that will make you blink and reconsider.  It is a tribute to the strength of this visceral emotion that it has produced such powerful evocations of a fundamental human passion.

--Otto Penzler



Fatherhood
by Thomas H. Cook

Watching them from a distance, the way she rocked backward and forward in her grief, her arms gathered around his lifeless body, I could feel nothing but a sense of icy satisfaction, relishing the fact that both of them had finally gotten what they deserved.  Death for him.  For her, perpetual mourning.

She'd worn a somber gown for the occasion, her face sunk deep inside a cavernous black hood.  She stared down at him and ran her fingers through his blood-soaked hair, her features so hideously distorted by her misery it seemed impossible that she'd ever been young and beautiful, or ever felt delight in anything.

By then the years had so divided us and embittered me that I could no longer think of her as someone I'd once loved.  But I had loved her, and there were times when, despite everything, I could still recall the single moment of intense happiness I'd had with her.

She'd been only a girl when we first met, the town beauty.  Practically the only beautiful thing in the town at all, for it was a small, drab place set down in the middle of a desert waste.  To find something beautiful in such a place was nearly miracle enough.

She was already being pursued by the local boys, of course.  They were dazzled by her black hair and dark oval eyes, skin that gave off a striking olive glow.  I yearned for her no less ardently than they, but I kept my distance.

Looking out my shop window, I would often see her as she swept down the street, heading toward the market, a large basket on her arm.  Coming back, the basket now filled with fruit and vegetables, she'd sometimes stop to wipe a line of sweat from her forehead, her eyes glancing briefly toward the very window where I stood, watching her, and from which I always quickly retreated.

The fact is, she frightened me.  I was afraid of the look that might come into her eyes if she saw me staring at her, their pity, perhaps even contempt, for a portly, middle-aged bachelor who worked in a dusty shop, lived alone in a single musty room, had no prospects for the future, and who had nothing to offer a vibrant young woman like herself.

And so I never expected to speak to her or approach her in any way.  To the extent that she would ever know me, it seemed certain it would be as the anonymous figure she sometimes noticed as she made her way to the market, a person of no consequence or distinction, as flat and featureless in her mind as the old stones she trod upon.  My fate would be to watch her silently forever, see her life unfold from behind my shop window, first as a young woman hastening to the market, then as a bride strolling arm-in-arm with her new husband, finally as a mother with children following behind her, her beauty deepening with the years, becoming fuller and richer while I kept my post at the window, growing old and sickly, a ghostly, gray-haired figure whose life had finally added up to nothing more than a long and fruitless longing.

Then it happened.  One of those accidents that make a perpetual mystery of life, that bless the unworthy and doom the deserving, and which give to all of nature the aspect of a flighty, cruel, and unloving queen.

One of my customers had tethered a horse to the post outside my shop.  It was sleek and beautiful, and coming back from the market, the girl of my dreams stopped to admire it.  First she patted its haunches.  Then she moved up the twitching flanks to stroke its moist black muzzle.  Finally, she fed it an ear of corn from the overflowing basket she'd placed at her feet.

"It is yours?" she asked me as I came out the door, my arms filled with the wood I used in my trade.

I stopped, astonished to see her staring at me, unable to believe that she'd actually addressed her question to me.

"No," I said.  "It belongs to one of my customers."

She returned her attention to the horse, drawing her fingers down the side of its neck, twining her fingers in its long brown mane.  "He must be very rich to have a horse like this."  She looked at the wood still gathered in my arms.  "What do you do for him?"

"Build things.  Tables.  Chairs.  Whatever he wants."

She offered a quick smile, patted the horse a final time, then retrieved her basket from the street and sauntered slowly away, her brown arms swinging girlishly in the afternoon light, her whole manner so casual and lighthe...

Edition details

• Publisher: Delacorte Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385317158
• ISBN 13: 9780385317153
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 360
• Editor: Otto Penzler