Two of the Deadliest: New Tales of Lust, Greed, and Murder from Outstanding Women of Mystery

by Elizabeth George (Editor/Contributor), Nancy Pickard (Contributor), Patricia Smiley (Contributor)

“Wicked little stories from old hands and relative neophytes.” — Seattle Times   There are seven deadly sins, and in this superb anthology, edited by Elizabeth George, some of the most able and original purveyors of crime fiction explore Two of the Deadliest . These “New Tales of Lust, Greed, and Murder from Outstanding Women of Mystery” feature sterling stories from Laura Lippman, Susan Wiggs, Carolyn Hart, Nancy Pickard, and George herself, as well as from other masters and exciting, tremendously talented newcomers.

Genres: Mystery, Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies, Crime, Mystery Thriller, Thriller

480 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Susan Elizabeth George is an American author of mystery novels set in Great Britain. Eleven of her novels, featuring her character Inspector Lynley, have been adapted for television by the BBC as The Inspector Lynley Mysteries.

She was born in Warren, Ohio, but moved to the San Francisco Bay Area when she was eighteen months old. She was a student of English, receiving a teaching certificate. While teaching English in the public school system, she completed an advanced degree in psychology.

Her first published novel was A Great Deliverance in 1988, featuring Thomas Lynley, Lord Asherton, a Scotland Yard inspector of noble birth; Barbara Havers, Lynley's assistant, from a very working-class background; Lady Helen Clyde, Lynley's girlfriend and later wife, of noble birth as well; and Lynley's friends Simon and Deborah St. James.

This Elizabeth George is distinct from the other author named Elizabeth George (Christian author).

Series:
* Inspector Lynley

Reviews

[Ahtims · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mixed bag of tales, most of them highly entertaining.
I hadn't heard of many of these authors and was much impressed with their writing . The narrators did a good job.
Loved all the tales within this collection , my individual rating would range from 3 to 5 stars, only a couple of the stories getting 3 , rest all.4 or 5. Would love to read this again some time later in life.

[Peggy Ellis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elizabeth George has gathered 23 short stories using the motive of lust and greed, two of the Seven deadly Sins. Of these 23, five are by new writers. Many of the other 18 are quite familiar to me, others are not. I’ll comment on only a few.

I’ll begin with Nancy Pickard’s sweet tooth, Dark Chocolate, in which we follow a woman’s actions as she bakes, slices, and eats this cake, seven inches high, sloping gently from the center to the edge of the perfect circle. It was hers, all hers. She determines to eat every bite before her husband comes home from work. Pickard gives us reason to believe there are children, but where are they? Is the husband actually coming home? There’s some psychological points here, not typical of Pickard’s cozy mysteries. Lust and Greed.

I was not familiar with Allison Brennan’s work, but her A Capitol Obsession has seduced me to add her to my list. This cozy features John Black, a Sacramento Policeman, and his former lover, Senator Lara James. Together they learn why someone is trying to frame another senator for murder. A satisfying cozy with romance, which has been mandatory in cozy mysteries for the past decade or two. Lust is the sin here.

Elizabeth George’s Lynley/Havers series of British cozies are one of my favorite reads. Her Lusting for Jenny, Inverted does not live up to my expectations. More narrative than dialogue and some very long paragraphs failed to capture my interest. The plot is okay – unfulfilled wife leaves home to take care of her aunt’s estate, meets younger man who becomes her lover who believes she has access to wealth, they find some items he knows but does not reveal are valuable, she unwittingly destroys the value as she burns her bridges with her husband. Greed is the sin here.

Peggy Hesketh was one of the new writers. My internet search revealed she is now multi-published in short stories and at least one book, so other people don’t share my opinion. I couldn’t make sense of A Madness of Two. The protagonist digressed into so may rabbit trails I was never quite sure what the story line actually was. I can say it’s a family story, but I don’t know if they were dealing with lust or with greed, or both.

Ah, but then there’s Linda Barnes who couldn’t write a bad story if she tried. Her Catch Your Death is typical of her cozy mysteries, although not a Carlotta Carlyle story. We have a serial murderer, but an unexpected plot twist at the end. Definitely greed.

All stories considered, I recommend Two of the Deadliest.

[Venita · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short stories are often the spice of life and these were entertaining. That said, they don't engage you and pull you in like a novel. I'll save short stories for when I travel.

[Bücherplanet · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ich bin Mitglied im Buchclub von MexxBooks und habe 'Denn dein ist die Sünde: Kriminalgeschichten' gelesen.

Ich bin ein großer Fan von Elizabeth George und habe ihre Krimis um Inspector Linley (vor allem die älteren) verschlungen. Leider gibt es die meisten ihrer Bücher noch nicht als eBook, zumindest nicht im deutschen Kindle-Shop. Daher habe ich mich sehr gefreut, als ich die Kriminalgeschichten entdeckt habe.

Elizabeth George ist hier Herausgeberin, nicht Autorin. Das war mir beim Kauf des Buches bewusst. Ich habe mich allerdings von dem Gedanken leiten lassen, dass eine so großartige Autorin sicherlich tolle Geschichten auswählen wird. Leider wurde ich bitter enttäuscht.

Im Vorwort des Buches beschreibt George sehr anschaulich, dass das Schreiben eines guten Krimis im Laufe der Jahrzehnte immer schwieriger geworden ist. Sie schreibt, dass früher die Wahl eines Tatmotivs, das den damals herrschenden, starren Moralvorstellungen entsprochen hat, viel leichter war als heute. Als Beispiel führt sie an, dass es früher vorstellbar war, dass jemand mordet, um sein uneheliches Kind oder eine Geliebte zu verheimlichen. Gründe, die heute aber keinen Krimileser mehr vom Hocker reißen würden. So schlussfolgert George, dass es die sieben Todsünden sind, die Autoren nach wie vor als Quelle für gute Tatmotive bleiben.

Nach diesem Vorwort habe ich voller Vorfreude mit der ersten Geschichte begonnen ' und bin gleich über diese gestolpert. Ich kann in den Kriminalgeschichten (auch den Folgenden) weder einen roten Faden, noch die sieben Todsünden als Leitmotive erkennen. Gut, in der ersten Geschichte (in der es einzig und allein um eine Frau geht, die Unmengen von Kuchen backt und verspeist) kann ich Völlerei hineininterpretieren. Und dann? Die Geschichten brechen entweder abrupt ab oder haben lächerliche Enden, wie die Geschichte, in der es letztlich um eine rollige Katze geht. Bei aller Liebe ' dafür quäle ich mich nicht weiter durch die Geschichten. Auch wenn Elizabeth George im Vorwort darauf hinweist, dass sie mit diesem Buch auf noch unbekannte Autorinnen hinweisen möchte, die Auswahl und Qualität der Geschichten überzeugt mich ganz und gar nicht. Schade.

Christiane für MexxBooks

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good collection of short stories by some of today's leading women mystery writers and edited by my favorite mystery author, Elizabeth George. It also included 4 stories by never before published authors and their inexperience definitely showed! I was interested to realize what a glaring difference there was between the first timers and the experienced authors; I would not have thought that it would make that noticeable of a difference.

[Heidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

An above-average anthology edited by one of the greats, containing new stories using greed and/or lust as a theme. My favourites were "Dark Chocolate" by Nancy Pickard, "Enough To Stay The Winter" by Gillian Linscott, and Elizabeth George's own "Lusting For Jenny, Inverted". The stories by the newcomers in the "Introducing..." section were all well-written.

[Cybercrone · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected something more to my liking in a compilation edited by George.
The first three stories were so dark and twisted that they gave me stomach aches. The rest in the regular section were OK, but nothing special.
My favourite story in the newbie section was Back to School Essay by Patricia Fogarty. It was original and great to read.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

yay! EG seems to have recovered from that horrible period of time when she wrote "what happened before he shot her". Great stories

[Ann Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compelling collection of stories that will have you re-thinking your definition of the word "mystery." Not a weak story in the bunch.

[Emelie · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5... The first 5 stories was fine but then it was just a dry run.. Read the first and the last pages of each story toward the end and i still understood what the content of the story was!

[Mrs. Read · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don’t believe any of these 3⭐️ ratings. Elizabeth George’s Two of the Deadliest is an excellent collection of short stories, with more really good ones than usual in such grab bags (“Playing Powerball,” “Cold, Hard Facts,” and two by previously unpublished writers, "A Madness of Two," and "Back to School Essay"). But best of the bunch - good enough itself to justify any collection - is the first, "Dark Chocolate," by Nancy Pickard. It is a fine (and dreadful) story, as good (and disturbing) as anything written by Stanley Ellin or Lawrence Block or Ruth Rendell. If for nothing else than that one, Elizabeth George’s Two of the Deadliest deserves to be highly recommended.
By the way, I’d probably rank George’s short Introduction as my second-favorite entry in the book. I’d love to quote the whole thing, but I’ll settle for this: "Athletes who abuse women, animals, or their own bodies tend to be judged not by the enormity of a crime they might commit but rather by their potential to take their teams to the playoffs"

p.s. However, do not trust George on the matter of Puget Sound vs Southern California living. I’ve experienced both, and although both have downsides, the L.A.-area downside is less damp.

[Diane · Rating 2 out of 5]

A quite uneven collection. I like that Elizabeth George included some previously unpublished authors, some of whom may have been in her creative writing classes. Did I read that somewhere? One or two of the stories were very good, but too many seemed rushed, crammed with unnecessary details, or as if the author was trying too hard to be clever.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always start anthologies with familiar authors, and then go back to discover new ones. These intriguing stories just keep getting better the more of them I read. There are thought-provoking dilemmas, interesting characters, and surprising twists, all presented with elegant writing. Brava!

[Barbara Dowling · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boring.

[Penelope · Rating 3 out of 5]

Collection with some good stories and some awful

[Valerie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of mystery stories that feature two of the seven deadly sins as motive. Not brilliant, but an easy read.

[Chantelle Russell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is such a mixed bag. Some of the stories are great. Some of the stories are straight terrible.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short stories are tricky but I had not read any for awhile so I enjoyed most of these.

[Sarah Blyther · Rating 1 out of 5]

First book I could not finish.....ever

[SoTired · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some really good stories. Some only so-so.

[Theresa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn’t finish all the stories. Short stories, some too sparse in details and some just too clever.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Elizabeth George.... but I still hate short stories.

[Lisbeth Mizula · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marcia Muller's CONTEMPORARY INSANITY is drop dead good read in this collection of shorts.

[Bill Monaco · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short stories from other authors compiled by Elizabeth George. Not what I was looking for.

[Dolly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an entertaining (although quite disturbing at times) collection of short stories written by female authors. I really liked that the editor included a section of stories by unknown or previously unpublished authors.

I liked many of the tales, but I also found most of them to be a harsh critique of society today. With the main theme of lust and greed (the two featured deadly sins), I couldn't help but cringe at most of the behaviors depicted.

Only one of the stories , "Anything Helps", left me with any real good feeling (even though the majority of the tale was depressing and filled with depraved people). Overall, the stories left me feeling like there's fewer and fewer good people out there.

I like cozy mysteries and I thought this would be a nice collection of short stories that would fit the bill. Most of these tales are anything but cozy, however, and I think I'll have to revert to something a little more refined, like a nice Agatha Christie tale.

interesting quotes:

"A man who was self-employed had to have an asshole for a boss or he'd get nothing done." (p. 33)

"Need can make men desperate, but greed, in my experience, makes men stupid." (p. 93)

"Men don't see women as other women do." (p. 196)

My normally well-ordered mind was operating like a Roomba vacuum cleaner, pinging off every barrier and heading in another direction." (pp. 271-272)

"It was the sort of thing you did when you worked for a newspaper in those days. You found people in the community who had interesting jobs, and you talked to them, and if you were lucky, they were interesting. And if they were lucky, you cared enough about their strange little slice of life to write a thirty-inch story that they could photocopy and send to whatever family member cared enough to say: 'That's nice, dear.'" (p. 371) This quote really hit me at home, since I was recently interviewed for the local paper. You can read the article here. 'That's nice, dear.'

"I think I understand now what my aunts were going through. Not the direct abuse or benign indifference from their husbands. But the invisibility. The idea that once you've lost your ability to spawn children you somehow fade into that corner of the universe reserved for thick-waisted ciphers, pert nosed, or not. Single or married. Good marriage or bad. After all the years of fawning and fumbling and falling down and stumbling back to your feet, you start to feel like you're starting to crack the nut of your sexuality in all its weird glory, and that's when you find yourself in a nation of one while everyone else has gone off to Aruba for a fling with flat-bellied bikini girls." (pp. 385-386)

"A customer would see the slots or the pornography or the alcohol, and somewhere back in the brain's neural tangle, bells went off, lights popped on, and the person would suddenly have the vacant mechanical look of unrequited want." (p. 397)

"Blood weighted the air enough that she tasted it on her tongue. This smell was too real, too much a reminder of the carnage the human species got up to on a daily basis." (p. 439)

[Alison C · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two of the Deadliest is an anthology of original short mystery stories edited by Elizabeth George, creator of the Inspector Lynley series. The conceit is that each story involves either greed or lust, two of the "7 deadly sins," or both. For reasons I don't quite understand, the stories are all by female authors specifically - it's not clear to me why it was restricted in such a way, as that seems an arbitrary rule for such an anthology. Stories by Nancy Pickard, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Dana Stabenow, Carolyn Hart, Marcia Muller, Laura Lippman and George herself, are mixed in with some lesser-known authors; a nice touch is that the last five stories are by either first-time authors or people whose work has been published in small publications with small readerships, all of whom were George's students at one time or another. As with any such anthology, some stories work better than others, and there were a few where I didn't think the theme of greed or lust showed up at all, but that's okay. Generally a fun read, but hardly indispensable, so a mild recommendation from me.

[JackieB · Rating 4 out of 5]

There were some very clever and subtle stories in here. Sometimes I had to think about how they related to lust and greed, but I don't mean that as a criticism: the authors had come up with some unusual and thought- provoking tales which made me think a bit. In many, the situation was not what it seemed at the beginning of the story. I'm really impressed that the writers could get such a lot into relatively few pages. Although obviously some appealed more to me than others,I don't think there was a single story I didn't like.
I really liked the fact that Elizabeth George had included 5 stories from otherwise unknown or little known writers. In fact, no disrespect to the other writers, but the story which really sticks in my mind was from one of the "newbloods", not from the established authors.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to most of the selections but did not complete three of the short stories. One reader was particularly abrasive, loud and aggressive and it was not a style that was good for me. I couldn't really listen to the story as the voice was very off putting. There were about six really good stories out of 23 in the collection. I really enjoyed the story about Jack London and his death. It was a story that i had not heard and kept me fascinated. I was disappointed in Elizabeth George’s story because I usually find her a very good novelist.

The collection of new and experienced authors did not work for me. I would recommend The Copper Bracelet by Deaver if you want to listen to a collection of mystery writers. I give this a three stars rating.

[Kb · Rating 2 out of 5]

The problem with a short story collection around such a narrow theme, with only women authors, selected by a lone editor is that there is not enough variety to make it memorable. In the end, the stories were so alike that they all blended into one another. Also, I confess that I much prefer realistic and plausible plots, which made many of the stories in this collection (including the one by Elizabeth George herself) unsatisfactory. I kept hoping to find a gem in the dross. Ultimately, I was disappointed.

[Ronald Wise · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of twenty-three original short stories written in response to a call for stories in which lust and/or greed acted as a motivating force. The first 18 were by established female writers of the mystery genre, and the last five were by women for whom this anthology served as an introduction of their work. The first several stories were not very notable, but that changed as I proceeded through the latter part of the book. I was especially impressed by two pieces: “Cougar” by Laura Lippman and “Back to School Essay” by Patricia Fogarty.