Description
DEEDS OF DARKNESS is the best short fiction produced by award-winning author William Burton McCormick. A collection of twenty-four globetrotting stories of suspense, mystery, crime, espionage, horror, and historical genres from the pages of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, Mystery Magazine, and elsewhere.
This collection includes short stories nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award, Shamus Award, Thriller Award, five Derringer Award-nominated stories, and two unabridged novellas, “Demon in the Depths,” which finished second in the Ellery Queen’s Readers’ Poll for 2021, and “House of Tigers,” named to the Honor Roll for both the Black Orchid Novel Award and the Mysterious Bookshop’s Best Mystery Stories of 2023.
DEEDS OF DARKNESS takes readers from war-torn Eastern Europe to gangster America and deep below the frozen seas of the Arctic Ocean. From modern tales of crime to World War II espionage to ghost stories in shadowy Odessa and murder in Ancient Rome, every flavor of suspense and adventure awaits within. With a foreword by Linda Landrigan, Editor-In-Chief of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.
My Thoughts
It’s been awhile since I so throughly enjoyed a collection of short stories as I did this one. Each story is a polished jewel of suspense or horror that explores the darkest areas of the human psyche. Some I’d read before but stories like Locked In and Kutsenko’s Cage impart the same sense of dread and horror every single time you read them.
Many stories take place in Latvia or other parts of eastern Europe, some in ancient Rome, and still others in various colorful locations. The stories also have an incredible range and varying lengths, both of which add considerable interest and readability to this collection. The author provides some sly commentary on things as wide-ranging as plagiarism in The House in Glamaig’s Shadow to beauty practices in Cleopatran Cocktails.
Every story brings something new, which is not often something you see in anthologies like this where many stories are pretty much the same. Not here. You’ll find a delightful if sometimes dark reading experience enhanced by the author’s beautiful command of his craft.
Highly recommended.
Publication Date: November 5, 2024
Published By: Level Short
Thanks to Book Sirens for the review copy
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