With a theme of
Murder They Wrote I figure I need to either nominate something with Jessica Fletcher (a.k.a. Donald Bain) or I need to nominate something done by a group of crime authors.
I saw enough Jessica Fletcher* growing up so I wanted to explore the second option.
Collaborative fiction has a fairly long history so there must be some good thrillers in the category. It turns out that there is a group of crime/mystery authors that does exactly this: The Detection Club.
G.K. Chesterton was the first club president and together with some amazing authors, including Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, put together their first collaborative novel in 1931,
The Floating Admiral. Wow! Yes please! Sadly it does not appear to be available as a ebook in the US. BOOO!
(It is available in the
UK though. 8 years to go in the US I guess.)
Spoiler:
The Floating Admiral by The Detection Club (1931)
From Wikipedia:
Quote:
The Floating Admiral is a collaborative detective novel written by fourteen members of the Detection Club in 1931. The twelve chapters of the story were each written by a different author, in the following sequence: Canon Victor Whitechurch, G. D. H. Cole and Margaret Cole, Henry Wade, Agatha Christie, John Rhode, Milward Kennedy, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ronald Knox, Freeman Wills Crofts, Edgar Jepson, Clemence Dane and Anthony Berkeley. G. K. Chesterton contributed a Prologue, which was written after the novel had been completed.
In a literary game of consequences, each author would write one chapter, leaving G.K. Chesterton to write a typically paradoxical prologue and Anthony Berkeley to tie up all the loose ends. In addition, each of the authors provided their own solution in a sealed envelope, all of which appeared at the end of the book.
As Sayers explained in the introduction to the book, "Each writer must construct his instalment with a definite solution in view—that is, he must not introduce new complications merely 'to make it more difficult' ... [E]ach writer was bound to deal faithfully with all the difficulties left for his consideration by his predecessors."
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With that lament out of the way, I am nominating another collaborative novel with a more modern Who's-Who list of authors including Jeffery Deaver, Diana Gabaldon, J.A. Jance, Alexander McCall Smith, Tess Geritsen, and many more. It's also available as an ebook and Overdrive has it.
No Rest for the Dead edited by Andrew Gulli
256 pgs
Amazon (
Smile) |
Kobo
Quote:
Contributing authors:
Jeff Abbott, Sandra Brown, Jeffery Deaver, Diana Gabaldon, Tess Gerritsen, Peter James, J.A. Jance, Faye Kellerman, Raymond Khoury, John Lescroart, Jeff Lindsay, Gayle Lynds, Phillip Margolin, Alexander McCall Smith, Michael Palmer, T. Jefferson Parker, Matthew Pearl, Kathy Reichs, Marcus Sakey, Jonathan Santlofer, Lisa Scottoline, R.L. Stine, Marcia Talley, Lori G. Armstrong
Synopsis:
When Christopher Thomas, a ruthless curator at San Francisco’s McFall Art Museum, is murdered and his decaying body is found in an iron maiden in a Berlin museum, his wife, Rosemary, is the primary suspect, and she is tried, convicted, and executed. Ten years later, Jon Nunn, the detective who cracked the case, is convinced that the wrong person was put to death. In the years since the case was closed, he’s discovered a web of deceit and betrayal surrounding the Thomases that could implicate any number of people in the crime. With the help of the dead woman’s friend, he plans to gather everyone who was there the night Christopher died and finally uncover the truth, suspect by suspect. Solving this case may be Nunn’s last chance for redemption…but the shadowy forces behind Christopher’s death will stop at nothing to silence the past forever.
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* I figure she must have been the world's most proficient serial killer, no one can have that many friends and acquaintances killed and not be involved.