annieb123
Written on Nov 3, 2022
Marple: Twelve New Mysteries is an homage anthology collection featuring 12 new stories by top-shelf authors channeling their best Christie vibes and featuring the world's most beloved octogenarian sleuth. Released 13th Sept 2022 by Harper Collins on the William Morrow imprint, it's 384 pages and is available in hardcover, paperback, audio, and ebook formats.
I'm of two minds about modern homage fiction. It seems to be either very very good or spectacularly awful. This anthology, happily, is really quite good. It's not surprising, since the 12 (all female) authors selected for inclusion represent some of the biggest crime and romance writers in the trade. As always with anthologies, some of them resonated better for me personally, but all of them were of a very high quality.
They were mostly in the 4 star range(ish) with a smattering of really standout stories. One reason I prefer collections and anthologies is that short fiction is really challenging. It's spare and the author doesn't have a wealth of wordage to develop characters or the plotting. Well written short fiction is a delight. I also love collections because if one story doesn't really grab me, there's another story just a few pages away. I can only recall a few times where I've read a collection (or anthology) straight through from cover to cover as I did this one. I also feel that the canonical Miss Marple really shone in short fiction format as opposed to full length novel.
Four stars on average. It's a diverting read.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.