FFB: The Plot Thickens

Collecting and publishing mystery short stories in anthologies to benefit a charity is pretty common these days, no doubt due to the rise of ebooks - prior to the new digital era, print short story anthologies were considered a hard sell.

One of the earliest such charitable enterprises I could find was The Plot Thickens, edited by Mary Higgins Clark back in 1997 to benefit the adult literacy organization Literacy Partners. Contributing authors include Lawrence Block, Edna Buchanan, Carol Higgins Clark, Mary Higgins Clark, Lauren and Nelson DeMille, Janet Evanovich, Linda Fairstein, Nancy Pickard, Ann Rule, Donald E. Westlake, and Walter Mosley. Each story had to include a tale that features a thick fog, a thick book, and a thick steak, although everything else was fair game. Here's the all-star lineup:

• "How Far it Could Go" by Lawrence Block is a conversational story set in a restaurant where a woman is interviewing a man she want to hire to intimidate her ex-boyfriend who says she owes him money;
• "Foolproof" by Edna Buchanan centers on the autopsy of an Egyptian mummy that reveals the supposedly thousand-year-old corpse was a murder victim with the same fingerprints as an infamous gang member;
• "Too Many Cooks" by Carol Higgins Clark is about an aspiring young actress in a steak sauce commercial where a series of puzzling accidents start happening on the set around her;
• "The Man Next Door" by Mary Higgins Clark finds a young woman kidnapped by her creepy neighbor, who happens to be a serial killer, via a shared basement;
• In "Revenge and Rebellion" by Nelson & Lauren DeMille, a woman entrusts her prized autobiographical manuscript to an old college friend-turned literary agent, but doesn't take his criticism too well;
• "The Last Peep" by Janet Evanovich is a story featuring the author's iconic bounty hunter, Stephanie Plum, who's on the trail of a peeping tom exhibitionist, only to have her discover the man's dead, naked body—which promptly disappears;
• "Going Under" by Linda Fairstein focuses on an ambitious young policewoman who goes undercover as a dental patient to catch a molesting dentist;
• In "Thick-Headed" by Walter Mosley, the author once again manages to pack a complicated mix of colorful characters like gangsters, pimps, prostitutes, and two friends in trouble into a tight tale;
• "Love's Cottage" by Nancy Pickard is a fictionalized timeline of events surrounding the fatal fire and murders at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin studios in Wisconsin;
• "The Road Trip" by Ann Rule follows a new divorcée on a road trip hoping to get away from her jealous ex-husband for awhile, only to find herself face to face with an infamous serial killer;
• "Take it Away" by Donald E. Westlake is an example of the author's trademark humor and charm, in which a hapless FBI agent on a stakeout is sent to get food for the team from the local Burger Whopper and strikes up a conversation with the man next to him in line, which takes a strange turn.

Both "The Man Next Door" by Mary Higgins Clark and "Take it Away" by Donald E. Westlake were chosen to be in the Best American Mystery Stories 1998, edited by the late Sue Grafton.

Comments

[Todd Mason]

I suppose citing how the MWA anthologies were meant to benefit the MWA is pulling the notion of a charity benefit a bit thin!

But such books did start rolling in by the late '80s/early '90s in a variety of fields...this one has about the mix one might expect from a MH Clark project. Also reminded of her magazine, the most ambitious new crime fiction magazine in commercial terms, at least, for some time...and not at all bad, if not as hardy as EQMM, AHMM or THE STRAND....