Flesh & Blood: Dark Desires - Softcover

Collins, Max Allan; Gelb, Jeff

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0446678589 ISBN 13: 9780446678582

Publisher: Mysterious Press, 2002

Synopsis

Sex and violence. They go together like greed and blackmail and jealousy and murder. Now acclaimed masters and rising stars of today's crime and mystery fiction offer erotic tales, luring you into the seductively dangerous realm of flesh and blood.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

The good news is that the first, relatively weak anthology in this series sold well enough to call for a follow-up, but the bad news is that, apparently, if you have sex, you'll immediately murder somebody. Following the format established in Flesh and Blood (2001), the editors again present one "classic" reprint plus 17 new stories intended to answer a question posed in the introduction: "But what is noir these days?" In the hands of O'Neil de Noux in "Death on Denial" and Bill Crider in "Top of the World," noir seems as atmospheric and doomful as ever. John Lutz, Bill Pronzini, Stephen Mertz, Jon L. Breen, Catherine Dain and Jeremiah Healy do respectable genre duty, if by no means living up to the sexual promise of the whip-wielding dominatrix whose leather-clad leg dominates the cover. Other stories have hotter sex hampered by major narrative disconnects, which might pass as surprise plot developments if they made any sense at all. Mickey Spillane's fast-paced 1973 reprint, "The Gold Fever Tapes," concerns a murdered pal and stolen gold while the sex is merely ornamental. Readers who comprehend Spillane when he writes, "Time was always on the side of the killer when these things happened. You can't just let them drop when you trip over them no matter what the score is," will have no trouble understanding the other tales. Those who avoid prurient material as a rule can pick this one up without shame.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Mysterious Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0446678589
• ISBN 13: 9780446678582
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384