Twisted

Jeffery Deaver is a master of the twist ending short story. Collected here are eight tales narrated by a team of three talented performers. In "Without Jonathan," Michele Pawk amplifies the suspense by pacing the story of a woman struggling to get over the death of her husband, but whose first date may be a killer. Boyd Gaines puts listeners on notice with his stylish air as he reads "For Services Rendered," about a woman seeking the help of a psychiatrist because her husband is trying to drive her crazy. Frederick Weller puts a redneck twang into his reading of "Eye to Eye," which follows a pair of small town cops who take pleasure in harassing the former high school nerd who has returned to town. With quiet confidence, Deaver reads his own introduction in which he shares his passion for short fiction and explains how he came to the form. S.E.S. 2005 Audie Finalist (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

December 1, 2003
The title applies in several ways to this wicked collection of crime short stories by bestselling author Deaver (The Vanished Man
, etc.): to many of the stories' characters and protagonists, who include murderers, adulterers, thieves; to the stories' arcs, which offer numerous bends and surprises; and to the general tone of the tales—as Deaver says in a brief introduction, "In a story, I can make good bad and bad badder and, most fun of all, really bad good." Of the 16 stories, 15 are reprints, some from Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
, some from its counterpart Alfred Hitchcock
, while one, a Christmas tale featuring Deaver's beloved quadriplegic crime-buster Lincoln Rhyme and his sidekick, Amelia Sachs, is original to the anthology. The opening story, "Without Jonathan," is representative of Deaver's approach here. A woman, Marissa, drives along a Maine road, tormented by images of her husband drowning at sea. She's on her way to meet a man, presumably her first date since her husband's death. Cut to the man, shown strangling a woman—is our heroine about to encounter a serial killer? The two meet... and it turns out that he's a hit man hired by Marissa to kidnap her cheating husband aboard the husband's ship, then throw him overboard. And so it goes in story after story, all characterized, in addition to clever plotting, by brisk characterization and compact, efficient prose. The Rhyme/Sachs entry, "The Christmas Present," is the cherry on the tart, as grumpy Rhyme and sweet but dangerous Sachs set out to save a woman from one apparent predator only to have to rescue her from another. Like an afternoon snack, this snappy volume will stave off hunger for Deaver fans until his next novel appears.