Review - THIRTEEN - MESDAMES OF MAYHEM

Fans of the lighter, softer side of crime fiction should take a look at the THIRTEEN from the MESDAMES OF MAYHEM.

The book was suggested to me by a rather circuitous route (cousin of / who is a work colleague of / who mentioned it to...), which is the only reason I would have even tried it to be honest. But the writers in this anthology include a number of winners and finalists from Canada's Arthur Ellis awards, so it was interesting to compare against the local short story competition winners I've been reading recently.

The majority of these stories are considerably more on the cozy side than I would normally go near, but there were one or two entries that I enjoyed a lot. There's a combination of fun, humour, supernatural stuff, and some decidedly odd goings on, which makes it a good collection for readers to dip into. Whilst it does suggest that it moves from dark supernatural to comedy capers, there's little here that's dark enough for me, but for fans of cozies this would be a great introduction to some of Canada's top female crime writers.