The Dark End of the Street: New Stories of Sex and Crime by Today's Top Authors

As Rozan notes in her introduction, she and co-editor Santlofer have made selections from “both banks of the stream dividing crime writing and literary writing” for this superior anthology of 19 new stories “on the twin subjects of sex and crime.” Highlights include Laura Lippman's “Tricks,” in which a con man rips women off after seducing them, and Lawrence Block's “Scenarios,” which takes the reader inside the fantasies of a sadistic murderer. Stephen L. Carter's gift for intricate plotting is on display in “The Hereditary Thurifer,” perhaps the volume's most distinctive tale, in which the new white rector of a predominantly African-American Washington, D.C., congregation learns that the church was the site of an unsolved crime of passion. Other contributors include Madison Smartt Bell, Lee Child, Amy Hempel, Jonathan Lethem, Joyce Carol Oates, and Edmund White. (May)