Friday's "Forgotten" Books - Murder on the Run

In keeping with my "Hot August Anthologies" theme for Friday's Forgotten books this month, I offer a contribution from the Adams Round Table.  Mary Higgins Clark and Thomas Chastain founded the Adams Round Table in 1982, a monthly meeting where author members discuss the writing craft, plot a few literary murders and share writing experiences.

The group expanded to include other authors, and in addition to the over one hundred novels members have published individually, the Round Table has also published at least five anthologies of stories, beginning with Missing in Manhattan in 1986. 

Murder on the Run dates from 1998 and features, as you might expect, stories in which the criminal is on the lam or a travel theme is otherwise tied in. There are a few familiar series characters, as well as some standalone creations. The series contributions include Mary Higgins Clark (Alvirah and Willy) where a lottery millionare returns to her humble neighborhood roots to solve a murder, in "Lady Sleuth! Lady Sleuth! Run Away Home," while Lawrence Block chips in with a tongue-in-cheek story titled "Keller's Choice" about Block's workaholic hitman with too many choices and an ethical dilemma.

Other stories include Dorothy Salisbury Davis's tale of a young man who flees the scene of an accident, titled "The Scream," and Judith Kelman's "Morphing the Millenniun," which chronicles a phobic toy inventor's rise, fall and revenge. Warren Murphy's "Another Day, Another Dollar," is particularly touching, in which a black assembly-line worker sets about to solves her brother's murder.

There are 11 stories in all, and while they might not be the best representative work of the authors included, they make for entertaining reading appropriate for a month when most of the U.S. (Congress and the President, certainly) and Europe are traveling on vacation.

Comments

[Todd Mason]

Quite a mixed bag of writers, there, in average quality of work...but, then, I'm as serious a non-fan of Strieber as I am a fan of Block.

[BV Lawson]

It *is* an interesting assortment of authors, which probably makes for very interesting luncheon meetings when they get together, too. Their last anthology was 2003, and I'm not certain if the Round Table is still meeting, though.