Once upon a Crime

by Ed Gorman and Martin Greenberg

In the hands of some of the most respected mystery writers of the decade, stories such as the confinement of Rapunzel, the peril of Little Red Riding Hood, and many others are given a compelling, suspenseful twist. But unlike the well-known traditional tales, the endings found here aren't always the familiar ones you remember - or expect. In Sharyn McCrumb's "Gerda's Sense of Snow, " an ingenious retelling of a classic, Gerda must rescue her best friend Kay from the Snow Queen, a crack dealer whose white powder erases pain - and makes the user her slave. A troubled teen assumes seven separate personalities after her wicked stepmother, determined to be the fairest of them all, drives her to an isolated cabin - and to dangerous deeds - in "Heptagon" by Joan Hess. In a charmingly contemporary adaptation of "The Six Swans, " a country singer tries to outwit his agent by hiding a promising new act in a secluded cabin. But the agent has devious plans of her own... in "Swan Song" by John Lutz. And an uproarious new version of "The Emperor's New Clothes, " by Simon Brett, has a top gangster finding salvation in televangelism - until a young gang member reveals the leader's true nature...

• ISBN10: 0425171280
• ISBN13: 9780425171288
• Publish Date: 1 October 1999 (first published 31 December 1998)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 28 October 2015
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc
• Imprint: Berkley Prime Crime
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 416
• Language: English

Reviews

[wyvernfriend]

This is a very mixed bag of stories, all clever and all interesting. These take a twist on the stories of fairy tale, taking a more crime oriented look at these stories. Many of them are clever and interesting but some of them are a litle laboured, trying to twist the story a little too much to fit the fairy tale. However it kept me interested and amused throughout.