Kwik Krimes

Written by Otto Penzler (Editor)

Narrated by Phil Gigante

Entire novels are often written about a single crime, detailing every gruesome, dark detail until the last drop of blood spatters across the page. Yet in this mystery anthology, renowned editor and author Otto Penzler weaves together to heart-stopping effect more than ninety tales of brutality, terror, and unexpected demise, with each story told in a swift one thousand words or less.

These crimes may be fast in both form and fallout, but none lack the dark impulses that too often guide human hands to ill ends. Prepare to be transported into the diabolical schemes of criminal masterminds…into robberies and pranks gone horribly awry…into closets crammed with skeletons…into families bound not by love but wickedness.

Authors include Peter Blauner, Ken Bruen, Rob W. Hart, K. A. Laity, Tasha Alexander, Patricia Abbott, Bruce DeSilva, Chuck Caruso, Gregory Gibson, Joe R. Lansdale, and many more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Dec 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781480558229

Otto Penzler (Editor)

Otto Penzler is a renowned mystery author, editor, publisher, columnist, and bookstore owner. His love for mystery stories inspired him to establish The Mysterious Press, which published only crime and mystery, and eventually led him to found The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. Today, The Mysterious Bookshop is known as the oldest and largest bookstores solely dedicated to mystery novels. Penzler’s award-winning career includes fourteen years of service on the Board of Directors for the Mystery Writers of America, and he is the recipient of two Edgar Allen Poe Awards, an Ellery Queen Award, and a Raven Award, among others. To date, he has edited more than fifty crime-fiction anthologies. He currently alternates between living in New York City and in Connecticut with his wife.

Reviews for Kwik Krimes

[rgazala_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

"Kwik Krimes" is an anthology comprised entirely of (very) short crime stories. By design none of the stories much exceed 1,000 words. Many of them aren't even that long. Editor Otto Penzler's experiment to assemble and present works of fairly extreme brevity without sacrificing consistently high writing quality largely succeeds, as far as it goes. That said, while some of the stories are interesting, none of them are allotted sufficient word count to be truly gripping. This is a collection of literary appetizers--it serves well to pique an appetite to pursue some of the contributors' weightier works, but nothing between the book's covers can satiate a hunger to sink teeth into a meaty tale of dastardly crime and punishment. Still, in our time-strapped world where a mere 140 characters can instantly foment anything from a flashmob to a revolution, there's something equally appropriate and timely about boiling the traditional crime story into something reasonably intriguing that can be digested quicker even than an egg boils hard.