POWERS OF DETECTION: Stories of Mystery and Fantasy

This uneven all-original story anthology, edited by Edgar-winner Stabenow, showcases 12 authors from both the mystery and fantasy fields. Highly original tales include Anne Perry's "The Judgment," which presents a trial for murder by witchcraft in a stunning new moral light; Alaska-based Michael Armstrong's "The Boy Who Chased Seagulls," which sensitively reworks an Aleut legend of crime and punishment; and Anne Bishop's "The Price," which offers gender-reversal with a vengeance. Deft irony pervades Laura Anne Gilman's ESP-ridden "Palimpsest," but other attempts at shape-shifting hard-boiled detectives and cunning criminals into fantasy realms are less successful. Simon R. Green's gloomy "The Nightside, Needless to Say" and Jay Caselberg's "Cairene Dawn" seem forced, though Caselberg has a whopper of a closing line, while John Straley's stomach-wrenching raven story, "Lovely," has a lot of gore and little saving grace. Mike Doogan's "The Death of Clickclickwhistle," an interstellar romp, has its Star Trek roots showing, and both Donna Andrews's "Cold Spell" and Sharon Shinn's "The Sorcerer's Assassin" suggest Harry Potter's Hogwarts without the special effects. Stabenow's own "Justice Is a Two-Edged Sword," her first sally into sword and sorcery, treads ground already familiar from a multitude of feminist quest trilogies. Agent, Martin Greenberg at Tekno Books. (Oct. 5)

FYI: Stabenow is the author of A Taint in the Blood: A Kate Shugak Novel (reviewed in Mystery above).