British crime-writing has never looked so good. Heading the bestseller lists across the world and mounting a fearsome assault on our TV screens, these are exciting times for crime fans. In this unique anthology, Maxim Jakubowski presents a compendium of the cream of British crime fiction.
Maxim Jakubowski is a crime, erotic, and science fiction writer and critic.
Jakubowski was born in England by Russian-British and Polish parents, but raised in France. Jakubowski has also lived in Italy and has travelled extensively. Jakubowski edited the science fiction anthology Twenty Houses of the Zodiac in 1979 for the 37th World Science Fiction Convention (Seacon '79) in Brighton. He also contributed a short story to that anthology. He has now published almost 100 books in a variety of areas.
He has worked in book publishing for many years, which he left to open the Murder One bookshop[1], the UK's first specialist crime and mystery bookstore. He contributes to a variety of newspapers and magazines, and was for eight years the crime columnist for Time Out and, presently, since 2000, the crime reviewer for The Guardian. He is also the literary director of London's Crime Scene Festival and a consultant for the International Mystery Film Festival, Noir in Fest, held annually in Courmayeur, Italy. He is one the leading editors in the crime and mystery and erotica field, in which he has published many major anthologies.
His novels include "It's You That I Want To Kiss", "Because She Thought She Loved Me", "The State Of Montana", "On Tenderness Express", "Kiss me Sadly" and "Confessions of a Romantic Pornographer". His short story collections are "Life in the World of Women", "Fools for Lust" and the collaborative "American Casanova". He is a regular broadcaster on British TV and radio and was recently voted the 4th Sexiest Writer of 2,007 on a poll on the crimespace website.
The only story I really liked was the one by Anne Perry. There were two more that were okay, but for the most part this was not my cup of tea. The two star rating reflects the average of a five star Anne Perry and a couple of three stars and the rest were zeroes.
I was so excited about this book - a huge volume of the *best* British mysteries!! I read three of them, neither one was a mystery. Such a massive downer.
Although I enjoyed several of the stories the editor failed to arrange them in a detectable order. The pacing was therefore " off" . As I only paid $1 at a library sale I cannot complain about not getting my money's worth.
I just didn't find most of these engaging. I was able to see the twist in several stories and some I couldn't get into, although all were short. There were a few really good ones that saved the collection though.
uneven but worth it for some very dark, cynical mysteries that had me longing for the early Christopher Brookmyre crime books. Give me unflinching life and cops why make wry jokes about it, please.