Land of 10,000 Thrills: Bouchercon Anthology 2022

by Greg Herren

“But will it play in Peoria?”

For years, the Midwest has been used as a stand-in for “average America”. The sweeping great plains, the heavy snows of winter, ice fishing and mighty rivers and frozen lakes. Midwesterners have a reputation for being the salt of the earth, friendly and kind and helpful and nice. But is “Midwestern nice” merely a cover for what really goes on in this part of the country? John Wayne Gacy, the bloody Benders, and Jeffrey Dahmer were all Midwesterners—but that doesn’t mean every Midwesterner has bodies buried in their basements…or does it?

To celebrate Bouchercon, the world’s largest mystery fan convention, coming to Minneapolis in 2022, editor Greg Herren is proud to present a series of tales that will shock and surprise you—and maybe make you think twice about that ice-fishing trip, or before taking a snowmobile out after the sun goes down. Featuring authors from all over the Midwest who know just how dark and lonesome it can get out there in the country at night, these crime stories will entertain you with their trip down the dark side of the “real America”—where the twilight’s last gleaming has an entirely different meaning and feel.

Featuring some of the top, award-winning authors in the field today—from Mindy Mejia to Marcie R. Rendon to Michael Wiley, Susanna Calkins and Erica Ruth Neubauer, and Bryon Quertermous, Tessa Wegert, Raquel V. Reyes, and Richie Narvaez—doing some of their finest work to date. Collected and curated by award-winning editor Greg Herren, with stories ranging from light to darkly funny to just out-and-out macabre, Land of 10,000 Thrills is one of the strongest anthologies put together by the Bouchercon conference to date.

These stories may not “play in Peoria”…but mystery fans everywhere will enjoy them.

306 pages, Paperback

Published September 8, 2022

About the author

Greg Herren is a New Orleans-based author and editor. Former editor of Lambda Book Report, he is also a co-founder of the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival, which takes place in New Orleans every May. He is the author of ten novels, including the Lambda Literary Award winning Murder in the Rue Chartres, called by the New Orleans Times-Picayune “the most honest depiction of life in post-Katrina New Orleans published thus far.” He co-edited Love, Bourbon Street: Reflections on New Orleans, which also won the Lambda Literary Award. He has published over fifty short stories in markets as varied as Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine to the critically acclaimed anthology New Orleans Noir to various websites, literary magazines, and anthologies. His erotica anthology FRATSEX is the all time best selling title for Insightoutbooks. Under his pseudonym Todd Gregory, he published the bestselling erotic novel Every Frat Boy Wants It and the erotic anthologies His Underwear and Rough Trade (to be released by Bold Strokes Books in 2009).

A long-time resident of New Orleans, Greg was a fitness columnist and book reviewer for Window Media for over four years, publishing in the LGBT newspapers IMPACT News, Southern Voice, and Houston Voice. He served a term on the Board of Directors for the National Stonewall Democrats, and served on the founding committee of the Louisiana Stonewall Democrats. He is currently employed as a public health researcher for the NO/AIDS Task Force.

Reviews

[Karl Jorgenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An entertaining collection of short crime fiction. The authors are a who's-who of modern crime writers, and their stories are mostly good, mostly clever, and uniformly well-written. That said, and out of bitter jealousy (my story was short-listed for this anthology but did not survive the final cut,) I note that many of these esteemed writers know little about Minnesota other than the snow piles up and the lakes are frozen. In one story, the connection to Minnesota is that a bad man is killed in Chicago, so the killers decided to dump the body in Minnesota. Huh. Is body-dumping illegal in Illinois?
Also, it's apparent from the stories the usual motive for murder is to end the relationship with an abusive boyfriend/husband. The anthology could have been titled "Land of 10,000 Frozen Misogynists." Again, bitter jealousy. Even though each of the stories is well-written and readable in its own right, the cumulative effect is more-of-the-same, which weakens the appeal.

[Vinnie Hansen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid crime-fiction anthology. Maybe a couple too many fishing stories, but what do you expect when the backdrop is the Land of 10,000 Lakes? Still, I appreciated Jim Fusilli's "The Opportunist" because it ventured into the farming community. Having grown up next door in South Dakota, I know how important, and yet underrepresented, characters like those at Red River Valley Sunflower, Inc. can be.

Some of the best known mystery short story writers, like Barb Goffman and John M. Floyd, grace this collection. In fact, my favorite story was John's tightly woven "Windows," although Eric Beetner's "Gone Fishing'" gave it a run for the money.

As the back cover states, the book could "maybe make you think twice about that ice-fishing trip."

[Mary Davidsaver · Rating 5 out of 5]

This anthology gives readers twenty-three stories that speak to the darkest of human emotions and the ensuing crimes of passion, revenge, and retribution, with a side of ghostly compassion, and ends with a dose of deliverance and justice. Greg Herren has orchestrated an enthralling collection of voices into a worthy read--not just a good one.

[Peter Nielsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting collection of short mysteries occurring mainly in Minnesota put together for the 2022 Bouchercon.

[Jessica Lerbs · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed most of them, even the ones where the main character was evil, surprisingly.