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A review by clair_82
Cwa Anthology of Short Stories: Mystery Tour by
5.0
A number of members of the Crime Writers’ Association (or the CWA) were invited to write stories with the focus on travel and intriguing destinations….and what fabulous destinations they chose!
The first CWA collection of stories first appeared in 1956 and have been published nearly every since however this is the first anthology I have read (hangs head in shame as crime is my go-to genre!). When I first picked up this book, I was most excited for the stories from Anna Mazzola after loving The Unseeing, Ragnar Jónasson as I am a massive fan of his Dark Iceland series, Michael Stanley after the fabulous Dying To Live and Susi Holliday as I adored the Banktoun series. That said, I was excited about all the sotries, to see how the idea of travel and crime had been personally used by each of the writers.
I started at the beginning and read each of the stories in turn – it is brilliant how diverse the stories are, how differently each of the writers have interpreted the scope; the locations and crime they have chosen. Each of the stories are about 10 pages long and it’s amazing how much tension and mystery each of the authors cram into those limited pages – I’m thinking that it is no easy feat to write a crime short story!
Whilst there were specific authors I was looking forward to reading as I am familiar with their work, I enjoyed being introduced to other authors that I have not yet read books from – suffice to say lots of new (to me) authors will be going on by TBR after my appetite has been whetted by this anthology.
I highly recommend this book and the fabulous thing about it is you can either binge read from start to finish, or pick it up and put it down when you have a free moment. A brilliant selection of stories!
The first CWA collection of stories first appeared in 1956 and have been published nearly every since however this is the first anthology I have read (hangs head in shame as crime is my go-to genre!). When I first picked up this book, I was most excited for the stories from Anna Mazzola after loving The Unseeing, Ragnar Jónasson as I am a massive fan of his Dark Iceland series, Michael Stanley after the fabulous Dying To Live and Susi Holliday as I adored the Banktoun series. That said, I was excited about all the sotries, to see how the idea of travel and crime had been personally used by each of the writers.
I started at the beginning and read each of the stories in turn – it is brilliant how diverse the stories are, how differently each of the writers have interpreted the scope; the locations and crime they have chosen. Each of the stories are about 10 pages long and it’s amazing how much tension and mystery each of the authors cram into those limited pages – I’m thinking that it is no easy feat to write a crime short story!
Whilst there were specific authors I was looking forward to reading as I am familiar with their work, I enjoyed being introduced to other authors that I have not yet read books from – suffice to say lots of new (to me) authors will be going on by TBR after my appetite has been whetted by this anthology.
I highly recommend this book and the fabulous thing about it is you can either binge read from start to finish, or pick it up and put it down when you have a free moment. A brilliant selection of stories!