The Verdict of Us All

New Stories from The Detection Club
2006

Containing 17 stories written to honor former Detection Club president HRF Keating on the occasion of his 80th birthday, I was really a lovely surprise. For him, I mean. For other readers, not so much.

People who recognize the names Keating, Dick Francis (who contributed a brief foreword rather than a story), Reginald Hill, Colin Dexter, PD James, Catherine Aird, Peter Lovesey, Robert Barnard, Simon Brett, Jonathan Gash, Lionel Davidson, Len Deighton, Liza Cody, James Melville, Andrew Taylor, Tim Heald, June Thomson, Michael Z Lewin and Michael Hartland will assume that I am largely if not entirely made up of murder mysteries. But no. There is some murder in me, and a certain amount of mystery as well, but what I really am, taken all in all, is shockingly low-crime fiction by a perplexingly detection-less Detection Club. A couple of the "stories" don't even bother to have plots, and several others probably shouldn't have bothered.

I suspect my authors were told in advance that the reprinted Inspector Ghote story Keating's wife had chosen for inclusion in my pages was the murder-free and unmysterious "Arkady Nikolaivich." But do my readers want a collective demonstration of professional tact, or do they want 283 pages of murders and clues and red herrings and clever solutions? Most of my writers were more concerned with personalizing their stories with inside jokes and Keatingesque beards and names containing plenty of initials than with delivering stories that satisfy. Add to that the fact that each story is introduced with the author's personal tribute to Keating rather than the biographical and bibliographical information you'd find in most anthologies and I am forced to describe myself as a book featuring many good mystery writers that isn't a good introduction at all to these mystery writers.

Only a few stories are worth singling out for one reason or another. Since I didn't realize James ever wrote short fiction I suppose it's an honor to have her represented here, and fans of Dexter may enjoy this post-Morse story featuring Lewis. I think only the stories by Lovesey (credited, if credit is really the apt verb here, with editing me) and Taylor are at all likely to satisfy a significant portion of my readers.

If you're a mystery fan, think of me as a library book. One that you aren't necessarily ever going to check out. Only if you're a mystery completist would I recommend that you buy me; I really don't see most of my stories being reprinted in any other context, and you may get a kick out of all the mystery name-dropping and the inside jokes. Future mystery fans, please just leave me alone. Several of my authors have written many wonderful mysteries, but you wouldn't know it by me.