5 Responses to “Thriller: Stories To Keep You Up All Night: James Penney’s New Identity\Operation Northwoods\Epitaph\The Face In The Window\Empathy”

• By Terence M. Hines on Mar 8, 2010

  This is a VERY disappointing collection of short stories. Of the 30 stories most are mediocre at best. A few are OK and only one, alas the very last one in the collection, is really good. This is by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child. Save your money – or wait for the paperback.
  Rating: 1 / 5
• By Regina C. Delorenzo on Mar 8, 2010

  The preview blurb for this item made it sound like a truly chilling experience. The stories are overall good but far from horrifying. A little disappointing
  Rating: 4 / 5
• By Tim C. Gilman on Mar 9, 2010

  Before every short story, a history of the writer is given (in detail) and then the story is read. I would say one in every six of the stories are actually a thriller (and that is being generous). Stephen King could write short stories that kept you on the edge of your seat..many of these are seasoned writers but they can’t pull it off…
  Rating: 3 / 5
• By Andrew A. Grgich on Mar 9, 2010

  Don’t bother unless you’re a die-hard fan of some of the authors here. I largely got the feeling that we were getting each author’s concept tryout work represented as ‘stories’. There is enough here to sample authors enough to know if you’ll like their work — Rollins, I keep trying to give you a chance but you keep shaking me with Matthew Reilly-like melodrama — but in all, only get it if you’re in the mood for stew instead of a true main course. Hey, sometimes stew is what the doctor ordered, right?
  Rating: 3 / 5
• By The Mysterious Monk on Mar 9, 2010

  Apparently, the term “thriller” here means: Writing. In. Short. Incomplete. Abrupt. Sentence. Fragments.

  Which even an eighth-grader would find stilted and boring.

  These writers seem to be under the mistaken impression that American readers are ill-educated morons who are incapable of struggling through any sentence made up of more than ten words.

  They also clearly have no understanding of the concept of “flow” in fiction.

  Periods. Stop. The. Action!

  Also, these are clearly not short story writers. One of these “stories” is unabashedly described in its introduction as being a fragment that had been left out of one of the author’s novels. A remnant, in other words, originally discarded as unnecessary and here passed off as a “short story.” WTF?

  Apart from cautioning me away from reading almost any of these author’s longer works, this book had very little value.

  I would suggest any of these writers — no matter how successful they might be — might find a lot to be gained in hitting their local used book stores and grabbing almost anything written in the “thriller” genre in the 1930′s through the mid 1970′s.

  There they will discover how really good thriller fiction “flows” as seamlessly as a midnight kick-boxing match in a Chinatown dive.

  And never stopping. For abrupt. Sentence. Fragments.
  
  Rating: 1 / 5

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