The Collected Stories of Amanda Cross

Informationen zum Autor Amanda Cross Klappentext Amanda Cross is master of the American literary whodunit. In her delicately menacing short fiction, assembled here in one volume, dangerous impulses seize the most unlikely individuals, and everyday existence is fast eclipsed by the bizarre. Among the compelling intrigues: The cold-blooded murder of Mrs. Byron Lloyd, shot dead during a writers' panel discussion . . . the enigma of the nameless toddler who walks out of the bushes one New England summer afternoon . . . the reappearance of a missing Constable drawing just where it can cause the most trouble . . . and other wonderful mysteries, many of which star the incomparable amateur sleuth Kate Fansler.INTRODUCTION       In 1987, I had faithfully promised the publisher of a Carolyn Heilbrun book that I would not work on another Kate Fansler novel until I had finished the nonfiction work then edging toward completion. The promise was made in all sincerity, but Kate Fansler, who rather resented being ignored for too long, was putting up a certain amount of fuss. I had not published a novel about her since 1986, and that one was written before 1985; she was growing restless. To those who have never created a series detective this may sound a bit mad; to those who have, however, it will hardly raise an eyebrow. Simenon reported how Maigret would intercept him if too long ignored; likewise Kate Fansler, who is inclined to hover when disregarded. Still, I had promised not to work on a novel.   It was then that the thought of a story about Kate Fansler came to me. I had, in fact, before the prohibition, been wondering intermittently if I might not use Fansler’s niece, Leighton Fansler (introduced in Death in a Tenured Position), as a sort of Watson–an idea that occurred to Leighton herself. And the next thing I knew, Leighton was reporting on Kate Fansler’s search for Tania. Once started, I wrote two more stories in this mode after “Tania’s Nowhere”: “Once Upon a Time” and “Arrie and Jasper,” and all were sold to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. By this time my Carolyn Heilbrun manuscript–it was Writing a Woman’s Life–had been completed and I was again able to contemplate my detective in a book-length adventure.   The next four stories and the last story, “The Baroness,” were each written in later years at the request of someone who was editing an anthology. In only one of them, “The Disappearance of Great Aunt Flavia,” does Leighton Fansler serve as narrator. “The George Eliot Play” is, however, the only story included here that has not previously been published; it was written especially for this collection and is entirely accurate in all its George Eliot facts.   The last story in this collection, “The Baroness,” is not a Kate Fansler story. This in no way indicates an intention to desert her or, worse, to allow her to desert me. It happened that at the moment when Sara Paretsky asked for a story to go into her second collection of the adventures of women private eyes and amateur detectives, I was intrigued with the idea of the relationship between two Englishwomen who had been friends from girlhood, but one of whom had moved, upon marriage, to America. I therefore used the American friend as the narrator in the only first-person story or novel I have ever written.   I am not a particular devotee of the detective short story, much preferring novel-length mysteries. I have noticed that I tend to read stories when an author’s longer works have captured my attention, when I find I like a certain author’s style of writing, and, most compellingly, when my interest in her or his detective urges me to search out more adventures in that fictional life. Thus, for example, I have read Dorothy Sayers’s short stories about Peter Wimsey, and even those about her wine salesman, Montague Egg, but her stories without either detective appeal less to me. I mention this predilectio...

Product details

• Authors: Amanda Cross
• Publisher: Ballantine
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 20.01.1998
• EAN: 9780345421135
• ISBN: 978-0-345-42113-5
• No. of pages: 192
• Dimensions: 140 mm x 216 mm x 13 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Suspense