Midnight Hour is a well curated anthology of crime fiction and light horror curated and edited by Abby L. Vandiver. Released 9th Nov 2021 by Crooked Lane Books, it's 336 pages and is available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.
This is a nice collection of varied short crime and light horror fiction from 2021 and all are by authors of color. There are several nominees here from mystery and crime awards such as the Edgar from the MWA (2 stories).
The stories are varied, there were (as always) some which didn't grab me
personally, but all were well written and competently plotted. They
were mostly in the 4 star range(ish) with a smattering of really standout
stories. This
is a well curated solid anthology of stories in the 3-5 star range.
There are 20 stories in the anthology and all are previously
unpublished fiction from very well known and some new-to-me authors. It shouldn't be noteworthy, but it is; not only are these authors all persons of color, but women are heavily represented here as well (16/20 by my count).
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.
Four stars on average. It's a diverting read.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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