The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime

The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6, edited by Maxim Jakubowski, is a collection of, well, mystery short stories written by British authors. This sixth edition of the long-running series contains stories published in 2007, while the book was published in 2009; many of the 39 tales come from the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and The Strand, although some original anthologies (Expletive Deleted, The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunnits, Paris Noir, and A Hell of a Woman to name a few) are well-represented as well. There are stories by well-known authors such as John Mortimer, Colin Dexter, Alexander McCall Smith, Anne Perry, Peter Lovesey and Christopher Fowler, and stories by authors who are new to me such as Danuta Reah, Bill show more James and Stella Duffy. What these and other authors in the book have in common is that they are all writing at the top of their game in these stories; although I didn't like all of the stories, I certainly could not say that any one of them was poorly written! This series is a useful compendium of short stories that would to hard to find otherwise, since few could afford to buy all of the books or magazines in which they first appeared (indeed, one of them, "Rosehip Summer" by Roz Southey, first appeared on the website of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne!) and as such, it is recommended for those who like their mystery stories served with a bit of British flavour. show less