Shoveling Smoke: Selected Mystery Stories
Librarians with active mystery collections have no doubt discovered Crippen & Landru's niche: the short fiction of noted detective and mystery writers. Their single-author volumes have featured tales by Carr, Muller, Allingham, Hoch, Pronzini, Moyes, Yaffe, and Keating. Although some readers, no doubt, discovered Maron fairly recently (when her Judge Deborah Knott novels began winning awards), she's been writing mystery fiction for 30 years, since she sold a cigarette-themed story, "The Death of Me," toAlfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine(for $63.75). The more than 20 tales gathered here were published primarily in mystery magazines through the '80s, and in such mystery short-story collections asSisters in Crimein the '90s. The leads in both Maron's series--NYPD detective Sigrid Harald and Judge Knott of North Carolina--figure in several stories; others stand alone, exemplifying a range of mystery styles, from silly to semisupernatural. A find for Maron (and short-mystery) fans.Mary Carroll--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.