Corralled in the collection’s second half, the older contributors live up to their star status: Margaret Atwood provides mordant poetry, Oates herself portrays an unlikely political assassin, and Valerie Martin offers a delicious guide to ridding yourself of an Italian sex pest. It would make an ideal present for a wicked aunt, but bear in mind giving it might be seen as incitement to murder.
Fifteen stories (and six ditties by Margaret Atwood) that view the conventions of noir fiction through female eyes. The most surprising aspect, given all the writers are women, is that the victims of crime/betrayal/despair are as likely to be shes as hes. Drowning, stabbing, shooting, beheading: the fun is endless. Highlights include Edwidge Danticat’s Please Translate, told in the form of phone messages; Valerie Martin’s Il Grifone, involving a horrible, goblinesque thug; and Assassins, the editor’s gory finale...
