What do you think?
Rate this book
Around a Dark Corner
Imagine a world where there is only the daylight to banish the darkness. And when the sun goes down, what lurks in the shadows around a dark corner?
310 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
4 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 26, 2010
Around a Dark Corner is Ms. Rector's third collection of stories, following Open Grave (2008) and After Dark (2006), and features nine short stories and a novella. It's a mixed bag in a couple of different ways; first of all, Jeani covers a variety of topics, from ancient ceremonial magic to modern serial killers to the horrors of the bubonic plague. Secondly, the stories range from `reasonable' to `great,' as you'd expect from any writers' collection.
Standout stories from this collection include `The Dead Man,' `Horrorscope,' `Maggots' and the novella, `A Teenage Ghost Story.' They feature a killer in the moments immediately following a murder, another killer guided by his newspaper horoscope, a scientist and student interested in insects' role in forensics and two teenage girls solving a ghost mystery, respectively.
Stories I didn't particularly like include `The Spirit of Death' and `In Any Language.' This is probably a simple matter of personal preference, as I found the former predictable and the latter just hard to get through. `Flight 529' and `The Golem' weren't stories as much as plain old retellings of a plane crash and an old Hebrew legend; even these stories, while failing to meet the standard of some of the others in the collection, still showcase Rector's talent with words.
Finally, two stories just flat out need to be developed into separate books of their own. `A Medieval Tale of Plague,' a story of a young woman's struggle for survival in plague-stricken medieval England, takes place in a beautifully crafted setting and features an appealing protagonist. It's only a few subplots and some serious conflicts away from being a great standalone novel. Similarly, `Lady Cop' features an interesting female lead, a gripping murder mystery and detailed police and coroner procedures that obviously involved some quality research on Rector's part, but it's too straightforward and wraps up too quickly. A few more twists and turns and a subplot or two and this one would also be a great standalone.
The bottom line? I give this one an 7.5/10 and I'll definitely add Ms. Rector's other books to my ever-growing wish list.
Standout stories from this collection include `The Dead Man,' `Horrorscope,' `Maggots' and the novella, `A Teenage Ghost Story.' They feature a killer in the moments immediately following a murder, another killer guided by his newspaper horoscope, a scientist and student interested in insects' role in forensics and two teenage girls solving a ghost mystery, respectively.
Stories I didn't particularly like include `The Spirit of Death' and `In Any Language.' This is probably a simple matter of personal preference, as I found the former predictable and the latter just hard to get through. `Flight 529' and `The Golem' weren't stories as much as plain old retellings of a plane crash and an old Hebrew legend; even these stories, while failing to meet the standard of some of the others in the collection, still showcase Rector's talent with words.
Finally, two stories just flat out need to be developed into separate books of their own. `A Medieval Tale of Plague,' a story of a young woman's struggle for survival in plague-stricken medieval England, takes place in a beautifully crafted setting and features an appealing protagonist. It's only a few subplots and some serious conflicts away from being a great standalone novel. Similarly, `Lady Cop' features an interesting female lead, a gripping murder mystery and detailed police and coroner procedures that obviously involved some quality research on Rector's part, but it's too straightforward and wraps up too quickly. A few more twists and turns and a subplot or two and this one would also be a great standalone.
The bottom line? I give this one an 7.5/10 and I'll definitely add Ms. Rector's other books to my ever-growing wish list.
Displaying 1 of 1 review