Tiny Crimes: Very Short Tales of Mystery and Murder by Lincoln Michel, Nadxieli Nieto
My rating: 4/5 cats
part of the reason i don’t read a ton of short story collections is because the prospect of reviewing short story collections makes my soul quake. it’s like having to write 20 reviews instead of one. or in the case of this anthology, FORTY. and sure i could just write a review for the collection in toto or not review the book at all, but that seems worse somehow. so, instead of shrinking from a challenge or rising to a challenge, i am going to ricochet the challenge a little and write a FORTY-THOUSAND WORD REVIEW, using that math where a picture is worth a thousand words. picture reviews take much longer than word-reviews, but they’re much more fun. for me, anyway. i’m not sure who you are or what you find fun. but feel free to tell me. i’m just going to be over here, finding the one perfect image that nutshells each individual story perfectly.
Circuit City – J. Robert Lennon – 4/5 cats
Any Other – Jac Jemc – 4/5 cats
nobody checks their voicemails anymore not even detectives – Sasha Fletcher – 3/5 cats
Give Me Strength – Karen Heuler – 4/5 cats
The Luser – Yuri Herrera, trans. Lisa Dillman – 3/5 cats
Hygge – Dorthe Nors, trans. Misha Hoekstra – 3/5 cats
Exit Interview – Christian Hayden – 5/5 cats
Ratface – Paul La Farge – 4/5 cats
Mary When You Follow Her – Carmen Maria Machado – 4/5 cats
Ghost Light – Elizabeth Hand – 5/5 cats
Highway One – Benjamin Whitmer – 5/5 cats
Airport Paperback – Adam Hirsch – 3/5 cats
A Bead to String – Michael Harris Cohen – 4/5 cats
The Fifth of July – Helen Phillips – 4/5 cats
Withhold the Dawn – Richie Narvaez – 4/5 cats
Good Hair – Marta Balcewicz – 4/5 cats
Dogface – Sarah Wang – 4/5 cats
See Agent – Anonymous – 4/5 cats
These Are Funny, Broken Days – Amber Sparks – 4/5 cats
Loophole – Adam Sternbergh – 4/5 cats
Knife Fight – Julia Elliott – 3/5 cats
The Meme Farm – Adam McCulloch – 3/5 cats
The Rhetorician – Adrian Van Young – 4/5 cats
No Exit – Fuminori Nakamura, trans. Alison Markin Powell – 4/5 cats
The Hall at the End of the Hall – Ryan Bloom – 5/5 cats
Friends – Laura van den Berg – 4/5 cats
Minor Witchcraft – Chiara Barzini – 3/5 cats
Three Scored – Nick Mamatas – 4/5 cats
The Odds – Amelia Gray – 4/5 cats
Nobody’s Gonna Sleep Here, Honey – Danielle Evans – 4/5 cats
The Wrong One – Erica Wright – 4/5 cats
The Trashman Cometh – J.W. McCormack – 4/5 cats
Actual Urchin – Henry Hoke– 3/5 cats
The Law of Expansion – Brian Evenson – 5/5 cats
Night Train – Fabien Clouette & Quentin Leclerc, trans. Jeffrey Zuckerman – 3/5 cats
What We Know – Misha Rai – 3/5 cats
Final Rescue – Kenneth Nichols – 5/5 cats
We Are Suicide – Benjamin Percy – 5/5 cats
Ailbi – Charles Yu – 4/5 cats
good lord, never again…
