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A review by octavia_cade
100 Malicious Little Mysteries by Isaac Asimov, Joseph D. Olander, Martin H. Greenberg
3.0
I spent some time earlier this year trying to write flash fiction, and was a dismal failure at it. (My best attempt ended up ballooning to 3700 words.) But I have to admit that I don't really read a lot of flash fiction, so my failure to write it should really have been no surprise. I lack the concision. Reading this collection of 100 tiny mysteries brought that home alright.
This was an enjoyable enough read, though I still prefer longer short stories I think. There's not quite enough meat for me to really get into a lot of these, for all I can appreciate that many of them are accomplished pieces of writing. There was, however - and this is due to the editors rather than the writers - a heavy emphasis on stories where husbands killed their wives (or, less often, wives their husbands). This made the collection as a whole rather repetitive. A greater variety of mysteries would have been nice - more stories along the lines of the collection's stand-out pieces, the sci-fi "The Sooey Pill" by Elaine Slater or the comedic "Pure Rotten" by John Lutz, for example.
This was an enjoyable enough read, though I still prefer longer short stories I think. There's not quite enough meat for me to really get into a lot of these, for all I can appreciate that many of them are accomplished pieces of writing. There was, however - and this is due to the editors rather than the writers - a heavy emphasis on stories where husbands killed their wives (or, less often, wives their husbands). This made the collection as a whole rather repetitive. A greater variety of mysteries would have been nice - more stories along the lines of the collection's stand-out pieces, the sci-fi "The Sooey Pill" by Elaine Slater or the comedic "Pure Rotten" by John Lutz, for example.