Opening Shots

Opening Shots is a collection of first stories published by prominent mystery and crime writers, along with brief accounts by each author recounting the paths the stories followed on their way to publication. In addition to the pleasure of the stories themselves, readers will discover a little about that first successful leap into print and can look for sings of the writer-to-be in this earliest effort. Readers will also encounter the work of some writers who had established themselves professionally before they ever wrote anything shorter than 60,000 words. They began as novelists and did not write short stories until someone convinced them to write one for an anthology. Their aptitude for short fiction and the delight they take in writing it are unmistakably evident in the work. Included in this stellar field are the following stories and their authors: Laud by David Black; Double Glazing by Simon Brett; Public Servant by Max Allan Collins; Spring Fever by Dorothy Salisbury Davis; The Tree on Execution Hill by Loren Estleman; Now's the Time by John Harvey; Death of a Romance Writer by Joan Hess Compliments of a Friend by Susan Isaacs; The Bathroom by Peter Lovesey; The Death of Me by Margaret Maron; Freedom by Susan Moody; The Dripping by David Morell; A Taste of Life by Sara Paretsky; Fan Mail by Peter Robinson; Jim and Mary G by Jim Sallis; The White Death by Justin Scott; The Tinder Box by Minette Walters; Arrest by Donald E. Westlake; You Can't Lose by Lawrence Block Lawrence Block is a four-time winner of the Edgar Allen Poe and Shamus awards and a recipient of literary prizes in France, Germany, and Japan. He is the author of more than fifty books, including fourteen Matthew Scudder novels, Eight Million Ways to Die and Even the Wicked.