Murder and other acts of literature
This delightful Book-of-the month-club selection, edited by Michele Slung, is subtitled: Twenty-four unforgettable and chilling stories by some of the world's best-loved most celebrated writers.
I have to agree with her there. AA Milne is indeed celebrated for his Winnie the Pooh stories, but who know he wrote a murder story narrated by the prospective victim?
Evelyn Waugh indulged too -- in a bittersweet confection involving the delightfully named Lady Moping and her hapless husband, who meets a genial chap during his stay in a madhouse.
Rudyard Kipling's contribution is a chilling war story concerning a lady companion whose upper lip turns out to be far more stiff and starchy even than that of her aged invalid employer.
A ghost story is contributed by the sharp-tongued and razor-witted Muriel Spark, whose narrator is the pragmatic and philosophical ghost of an uncompromising girl who has died through falling afoul of a man about to commit bigamy. Naturally, he wants to keep his dark past secret.
Une Crime Maternel, by Fay Weldon, is a short monologue addressed by a prisoner to her silent social worker. She explains why she poisoned the divorced father of her children and expresses her misguided concerns for them.
Nadine Gordimer weighs in with a story of an innocent childish love between a white farm boy and a black girl. When they reach puberty, their doomed connection is shockingly severed by the strictures of their society.
The inimitable Edith Wharton describes the last journey of a young married couple and the wife's strange reaction to her husband's death on the train.
There's much more. This banquet of murder stories runs the gamut from chilling to almost cosy.