REVIEW

CROSSTOWN TRAFFIC, edited by Stuart Coupe, Julie Ogden & Robert Hood

Reviewed By
Karen Chisholm

Love a quest and tracking down copies of these short story collections seems to have become one of my major quests.  A lot of these go back to the days of Mean Streets Magazine, and there have always been a few that elluded me.  Very happy dancing when I finally spied a copy in Kill City during a recent trip to Melbourne.

As per the blurb this is a cross genre set of stories, many of which take the reader off in most unexpected directions.  Crime morphing into Western, Science Fiction, Fairy Tales and Fantasy shouldn't really be all that surprising if you think about it - the context of a story doesn't really matter, the quality of the story-telling is paramount.  And the writers in this collection are some of our best genre writers, and it's a relief to know that many are still writing to this day.

Great fun - so pleased I tracked down a copy of this collection.  Okay - now everyone else can get out their own their own quest (we're not going to be falling over each other looking for this book :) )

BOOK DETAILS
BLURB

Twelve adventurous Australian writers respond to the challenge of creating a hybrid crime story. Murder, mayhem and malice intercept with science fiction, fantasy, horror, western, fairy tale and romance writing to create an unholy miasma, the likes of which you have never encountered before.

Expect the unexpected. Prepare for the confrontation. The crime fiction story has been invaded by marauding genres. The boundaries have been blurred. You have been warned. A cross genre crime anthology featuring Australia's best writers of crime playing with genre boundaries. There's some SF, Fantasy, Horror, Magic Realism.

Authors include Garry Disher, Marele Day, Robert Wallace, Jean Bedford, Peter Corris, Terry Dowling, and others.

Contents:

  • Introduction - Stuart Coupe
  • The Kid and the Man from Pinkertons - Marele Day
  • My Brother Jack -  Garry Disher
  • Finding Fire - Jean Bedford
  • And Then She Kissed Him  - Steve Wright
  • Voyeur Night - Robert Hood
  • Arizona Dawn - Peter Corris
  • Blue Groper - Robert Wallace
  • The Big Fairy Tale Sleep - Domenic Cadden
  • Fear-Me-Now - Terry Dowling
  • I Am My Father's Daughter - Bill Congreve
  • I Am Dying Egypt, Dying - Kerry Greenwood
  • Sensible Shoes - Jan McKemmish

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