James Robert Smith

This late Arkham House offering is weighed down by some real stinkers but there are enough classic stories by the likes of Wellman and Starrett as well as a few new stories notably by Joel Lane and Fred Chappell and Kealan Patrick Burke to carry the volume along.

These themed anthologies are always a dodgy affair since the theme always somewhat constrains the writers to begin with. Some of the stories end up merely name checking Poe's stories in a Where's Waldo fashion. I was tempted to skip show more over the less inspired fare but stuck to it since the volume is rather slim to begin with. show less

A very rare rating for me but couldn't help it. Then only reason it got the one star was because of one story by Steve Alten. The rest were either book filler stories, boring or badly written. The first book was more interesting, and i'm not sure I'm going to bother reading the third book. Shame - though it does prove that Steve Alten is good.