THE BEST LAID PLANS, edited by Judy Penz Sheluk
I don’t usually seek out short story collections but this volume hooked me immediately and was well worth the time.
This collection of 21 mystery tales is a gold mine of high caliber mystery writing, inventive plots, and a few laughs as well as gasps.
The stories all stem from one basic theme: how the best-laid plans often go awry. Edited by Judy Penz Sheluk, her intro prepares us for a wide interpretation: “There’s crime and criminals, history, humor, and humility, scheming and skullduggery, danger, detectives, and deception.”
She isn’t wrong.
Most of the stories are close to novella length and all are immersive, quickly creating worlds and dilemmas for us to explore. Again and again, I was struck by the quality of the writing and how these authors managed to fit such rich plots, landscapes, and characters into the short story format. Highly recommended.
Each tale is proceeded by a nice bio of the author, focusing on their crime and mystery writing chops. My To Be Read list grew just from reading the bios.
The authors are Tom Barlow, Susan Daly, Lisa de Nikolits, P.A. De Voe, Peter DiChellis, Lesley A. Diehl, Mary Dutta, C.C. Guthrie, William Kamowski, V.S. Kemanis, Lisa Lieberman, Edward Lodi, Rosemary McCracken, LD Masterson, Edith Maxwell, Judy Penz Sheluk, KM Rockwood, Peggy Rothschild, Johanna Beate Stumpf, Vicki Weisfeld, and Chris
Wheatley.
Get THE BEST-LAID PLANS collection on Amazon: https://geni.us/best-laid