True Crime by Donna Tartt
available in Murder for Love, edited by Otto Penzler, Delacorte Press, January 1996
Things were getting hot in Idaho. Smiling,
strangled, in his distinctive red-and-silver pickup,
he seethed with the name of actress Elke Sommer.
Full moons seemed to bring out the worst in him.
So did eighteen year old neighbor Debra Earl. Lake Charles,
..........Louisiana.
Prognosis: poor. Following a late dance at the VFW hall,
Authorities recovered a diary, a favorite rifle, a sales receipt
For antifreeze. "I have a problem. I'm
A cannibal." He spoke of plans
For a G.E.D. degree, a part-time candy business.
Stick figures of his first-grade sweetheart
Were scratched along the barrel of his gun.
Murder for Loveedited by Otto Penzler
First Edition
Hardcover
ISBN: 0752807358
Murder for Love
edited by Otto Penzler
Delacorte Press
Hardcover
323 pages
January 1996
ISBN: 0385314663
Murder for Loveedited by Otto Penzler
Dell Publishing
Paperback
319 pages
January 1997
ISBN: 0385318405
Murder for Love
by Otto Penzler
Delta
Trade Paperback
January 1997
ISBN: 0385318405
Murder for Loveedited by Otto Penzler
Random House
Paperback
358 pages
March 1999
ISBN: 0440221056
Murder for Love
edited by Otto Penzler
Dell Publishing
Reprint Edition
Mass Market Paperback
March 9, 1999 0.89 x 6.78 x 4.12
ISBN: 0752811207
Murder for Loveedited by Otto Penzler
Audio Book
Murder for Loveedited by Otto Penzler
Audio Book
Murder for Love edited by Otto Penzler includes "True Crime" by Donna Tartt
Original anthology of 16 stories of romantic love gone wrong.
From the Publisher
Eight men and eight women--the best writers in and out of the mystery field--render their very own, original take on love gone wrong in this fresh collection of stories.
Animosity and affection intermingle dangerously in these delightfully deadly works by: William J. Caunitz, Carol Higgins Clark, Mary Higgins Clark, James Crumley, John Gardner, Faye Kellerman, Jonathan Kellerman, Elmore Leonard, Ed McBain, Michael Malone, Bobbie Ann Mason, Joyce Carol Oates, Sara Paretsky, Anne Perry, Shel Silverstein, and Donna Tartt.
An innovative anthology about men, women, and crimes of passion, Murder For Love brings to light the dark side of love.
From Emily Melton - Booklist
Penzler, a mystery superbuff himself (he owns the world's largest mystery bookstore and founded Mysterious Press), offers up a panoply of short stories from some of today's most popular and most talented mystery writers, including Jonathan Kellerman, Sara Paretsky, and Elmore Leonard.
The 16 selections possess all the usual ingredients--from page-turning suspense to off-the-wall humor to 90 mph action--but in addition, as the title implies, they all have something to do with love, usually the misguided kind. There isn't a weak story among the group, but especially noteworthy are Kellerman's portrait of a working mom with an unusual career, Leonard's humorously bittersweet portrait of a doomed romance between a U.S. marshal and a bank robber, and Carol Higgins Clark's hilarious yet disturbing account of an out-of-work actress and her answering machine.
Expect mystery readers to be clamoring for this fine collection, which has already been made a selection of the Mystery Guild, the Doubleday Book Club, and the Literary Guild. Buy multiple copies.
Contents:
Introduction by Otto Penzler (introduction)
Dying Time by William J. Caunitz (short story)
For Whom the Beep Tolls by Carol Higgins Clark (short story)
Definitely, a Crime of Passion by Mary Higgins Clark (novelette)
Hot Springs by James Crumley (novelette)
The Loving You Get by John Gardner (short story)
The Stalker by Faye Kellerman (short story)
The Things We Do for Love by Jonathan Kellerman (short story)
Karen Makes Out by Elmore Leonard (novelette)
Red Clay by Michael Malone (novelette)
Nancy Drew Remembers (A Parody) by Bobbie Ann Mason (novelette)
Running from Legs by Ed McBain (novelette)
At the Paradise Motel, Sparks, Nevada by Joyce Carol Oates (short story)
Heartbreak House by Sara Paretsky (short story)
The Blackmailer by Anne Perry (short story)
For What She Had Done by Shel Silverstein (poem)
True Crime by Donna Tartt (vignette, reprint)
Reviews 1 2 3 4 5
Murder for Love: Murder for Women edited by Otto Penzler
includes "True Crime" by Donna Tartt
Murder for Love: Murder for WomenDove Audio
Audio Book
6 Hours
January 1996
introduction by Otto Penzler
Tartt, Donna, - True Crime, 1996. (poem, reprint)
From AudioFile
Eight exquisitely narrated stories feature love and murder with varying degrees of hard-boiled machismo. Each story showcases the unique style of its author, and each is performed by a carefully chosen reader. Otto Penzler, the reigning guru of crime fiction, provides insightful introductions to the stories, including anecdotes that personalize each one. Everything in this production is topflight, from the selection of authors to the sound quality, the presentation of the stories and even the incidental music. D.T.H. An AUDIOFILE Earphones Award winner
Ingram
Stories include "Dying Time" by Otto Penzler, "Hot Springs" by James Crumley, "The Loving You Get" by John Gardner, "The Things We Do For Love" by Elmore Leonard, "Running From Legs" by Ed McBain, "Red Clay" by Michael Malone, "For What She Had Done" by Shel Silverstein. Simultaneous hardcover release from Mysterious Press. 4 cassettes.
The Reason Why: An Anthology of the Murderous Mind edited by Ruth Rendell
includes an excerpt from "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt
The Reason Why: An Anthology of the Murderous Mindedited by Ruth Rendell
Crown
Hardcover
244 pages
March 1996 0.94 x 8.56 x 5.78
ISBN: 0517703475
Book Description
One of the world's most acclaimed mystery writers presents an anthology of literary depictions of murder that delves into the human passions, terrors, and foibles that incite the act and linger in its wake. Includes such writers as Sophocles, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Poe, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Albert Camus, Graham Greene, P.D. James, Truman Capote, and Norman Mailer.
Ingram
A collection of literary whodunits--by Graham Greene, P. D. James, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Poe, Norman Mailer, Thomas Hardy, and other notable writers--journeys inside the criminal mind to explore the dark human passions, terrors, foibles, and motives that lead to murder. 12,500 first printing.
From Library Journal
Excerpts from a broad range of writings, including both fiction and nonfiction, attempt to explain what compels one person to take the life of another. Rendell has arranged the selections by motive and situation, and perhaps sheds some light on the human psyche.
From Publisher's Weekly
How effective is a paragraph of Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment out of context? Not very, and that's the problem with Rendell's anthology of more than 100 snippets from sources as diverse as the Bible, Matthew Arnold's "Sohrab and Rustum," Toni Morrison's Beloved and Melanie Klein's A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of Manic-Depressive States. Rendell (Simisola) begins with the premise that the "passions and terrors" that motivate murderers are more interesting than the act of murder itself. No doubt this is true, but although some of the excerpts are good enough to send readers back to the complete sources, the exercise here is too limited. So are Rendell's brief introductory comments to each selection, e.g., "A Mistreated wife takes revenge for a death." Rendell, brilliant at using narrative arc and duration to build suspense in her own writing, knows better. These digests are simply too neat. Like a funky highlight film, they provide neither a serious analytical approach nor a rich imaginative one. (Mar.)
Anthology of writings about murder.
Introduction by Ruth Rendell (introduction)
1. 'O, Hideous Sequel' In the Family
from Oedipus the King by Sophocles; trans. by Paul Roche (poem)
from Genesis IV by Anon. (excerpt)
from Cain by Lord Byron (excerpt), 1821
from The Cenci by Percy Bysshe Shelley (poem), 1819
from Adam Bede by George Eliot (excerpt), 1859
from The Medea of Euripides by Euripides; trans. by Rex Warner (poem)
from The Dain Curse by Dashiell Hammett ex New York: Knopf, 1929
from A Shropshire Lad by A. E. Housman (poem), 1896
from An American Dream by Norman Mailer ex New York: The Dial Press, 1965
from Malice Aforethought by Francis Iles ex London: Gollancz, 1931
from Fragments from My Diary by Maxim Gorky (excerpt)
from The Trial of Madeleine Smith by F. Tennyson Jesse (excerpt), 1927
from Arden of Feversham by Anon. (excerpt), 1592
from The Trial of Dr. Hawley Garvey Crippen by Filson Young (excerpt), 1920
from Othello, the Moor of Venice by William Shakespeare (excerpt), 1604
from "Her Second Husband Hears Her Story" by Thomas Hardy (poem)
from The Innocent by Ian McEwan (excerpt), 1990
from "George Smith, The Murder of Bessie Mundy, 1912" by Gordon Honeycombe ex The Murders of the Black Museum 1870-1970, Gordon Honeycombe, 1982
from Double Indemnity by James M. Cain ex New York: Knopf, 1943
from We, the Accused by Ernest Raymond ex Cassell's, 1935
2. 'The Way of His Wickedness' Murder for Revenge
from Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope (excerpt), 1858
from Chronicles of a Death Fortold by Gabriel García Márquez; trans. by Gregory Rabassa (excerpt), 1986
from "The Foundling" by Heinrich von Kleist; trans. by David Luke & Nigel Reeves ex The Marquise of O & Other Stories, Penguin, 1978
from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad (excerpt), 1907
from "A Jury of Her Peers" by Susan Glaspell (excerpt) Every Week Mar 5 '17
from Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (excerpt), 1955
from No Name by Wilkie Collins (excerpt), 1862
All the Better to See You With by Ciaran Carson (poem), 1989
from 'Tis a Pity She's a Whore by John Ford (excerpt), 1633
The Sacrilege by Thomas Hardy (poem)
from The Letter by W. Somerset Maugham (excerpt), 1952
from Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell (excerpt), 1848
An Uncle's Advice [from Metamorphoses] by Ovid; trans. by Horace Gregory (poem), 1958
from Salome by Oscar Wilde (excerpt), 1894
from Hassan by James Elroy Flecker (excerpt), 1922
from "A Vendetta" by Guy de Maupassant; trans. by H. N. P. Sloman (excerpt)
The Vengeance of a Skull [from The Revenger's Tragedy] by Cyril Tourneur (excerpt), 1607
from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (excerpt), 1925
from Billy Bathgate by E. L. Doctorow (excerpt), 1989
from "Metonymy, or The Husband's Revenge" by Rachel de Queíroz; trans. by William L. Grossman (excerpt), 1967
3. 'To Bask in the Sun' Killers for Gain
from II Samuel XI by Anon. (excerpt)
from Thérèse Raquin [1867] by émile Zola; trans. by L. W. Tancock (excerpt)
from "The Queen of Spades" by Alexander Pushkin; trans. by Paul Debreczeny (excerpt), 1834
from "The Murder of the Mandarin" by Arnold Bennett (excerpt) Grim Smile of the Five Towns, Chatto, 1907
To Gain a Throne [from The Princes in the Tower] by Alison Weir (excerpt), 1992
from "Mademoiselle de Scudéry" by E. T. A. Hoffmann; trans. by R. J. Hollingdale (excerpt), 1982
from Murder Revisited by John Rowland (excerpt), 1961
from Macbeth by William Shakespeare (excerpt), 1606
from "The Payoff" by Stanley Ellin ex EQMM Nov '71
from Great Shipwrecks and Castaways by Charles Neider (excerpt), 1952
from "The Garden of Smoke" by G. K. Chesterton ex The Storyteller Oct '19
from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (excerpt), 1866
4. 'Forbidden Actions' Guilt and Remorse
from "Some Character-Types Met With in Psychoanalytic Work" by Sigmund Freud (excerpt), 1915
from "His Brother's Keeper" by W. W. Jacobs (excerpt) The Strand Dec '22
from "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe (excerpt) The Pioneer Jan, 1843
from Mary Queen of Scots by Antonia Fraser (excerpt), 1969
from "The Dream of Eugene Aram" by Thomas Hood (excerpt)
from The Book of Evidence by John Banville (excerpt), 1989
from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (excerpt), 1837
from "Sohrab and Rustum" by Matthew Arnold (poem)
from Payment Deferred by C. S. Forester (excerpt), 1926
from "Peter Grimes" by George Crabbe (poem), 1810
from "The Man of God" by Leo Tolstoy (excerpt)
from Caleb Williams by William Godwin (excerpt) Things As They Are, William Godwin, B. Crosby, 1794
5. 'To Stop Her Crying' Escaping the Consequences
from Innocent Blood by P. D. James (excerpt), 1980
from Dead Certainties by Simon Schama (excerpt), 1992
from "Telling" by Elizabeth Bowen (excerpt) The Black Cap, ed. Cynthia Asquith, London: Hutchinson, 1927
from Judges IV by Anon. (excerpt)
from The Secret History by Donna Tartt (excerpt), 1992
from A Demon in My View by Ruth Rendell (excerpt), 1976
from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (excerpt), 1866
from "My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning (poem), 1842
from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (excerpt) Lippincott's Jul, 1890
from "Honolulu" by W. Somerset Maugham (excerpt) Everybody's Magazine Oct '21
from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon (excerpt), 1776-88
from Dr. Glas by Hjalmar Söderberg; trans. by Paul Britten Austin (excerpt), 1905
from Daniel Deronda by George Eliot (excerpt), 1876
from Sara Thornton, The Story of a Woman Who Killed by Jennifer Nadel (excerpt), 1993
from The Changeling by Thomas Middleton & William Rowley (excerpt), 1622
6. 'For Love and Not for Hate' Killing from Altruism or Duty
from The Physician's Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer (excerpt)
from "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (excerpt), 1850
from Beloved by Toni Morrison (excerpt), 1987
from "The Salt of the Earth" by Rebecca West (excerpt), 1935
from Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (excerpt), 1891
from They Shoot Horses, Don't They? by Horace McKoy (excerpt), 1935
from Citizens by Simon Schama (excerpt), 1994
from The Judge and His Hangman by Friedrich Dürrenmatt; trans. by Cyrus Brooks (excerpt), 1952
from Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot (excerpt), 1935
A soldier recalls what killing a man in war meant to him by Denys L. Jones (poem)
from The Face of the Third Reich by Joachim C. Fest; trans. by Michael Bullock (excerpt), 1963
from Judith XXII by Anon. (excerpt)
7. "A Field of Evil Forces" The Psychopath No One Understands
from Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son by Gordon Burn (excerpt), 1985
from The Bad Seed by William March (excerpt), 1954
from The Mainspring of Murder by Philip Lindsay (excerpt), 1958
from A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of Maniac-Depressive States by Melanie Klein (excerpt), 1935
Porphyria's Lover by Robert Browning (poem) Dramatic Lyrics, 1842
from The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg (excerpt), 1824
from The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (excerpt) New York: Coward-McCann, 1955
from Beyond Belief by Emlyn Williams (excerpt), 1967
from 10 Rillington Place by Ludovic Kennedy (excerpt), 1971
from Killer Department by Robert Cullen (excerpt), 1993
Psychopath by Carol Ann Duffy (poem), 1987
from How We Die by Sherwin B. Nuland (excerpt), 1993
from Brighton Rock by Graham Greene (excerpt), 1938
from The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer (excerpt) Boston: Little Brown, 1979
from Shot in the Heart by Mikal Gilmore (excerpt), 1994
from The Death Shift by Peter Elkind (excerpt), 1983
from Murder on Ward Four by Nick Davies (excerpt), 1993
from "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson (excerpt) New York: George Munro, 1886
from Killing for Company by Brian Masters (excerpt), 1985
8. 'The Ones Who Had to Pay' Murder for Murder's Sake
from Life After Life by Tony Parker (excerpt), 1990
from In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (excerpt) New York: Random House, 1966
from Rope by Patrick Hamilton (excerpt), 1929
from The Vatican Cellars by André Gide; trans. by D. Bussy (excerpt) Cassell's, 1952; Les caves du Vatican, Gallimard; Paris, 1950.
A Staffordshire Murderer by James Fenton (poem), 1982
from The Outsider by Albert Camus; trans. by Joseph Laredo (excerpt), 1942
Gilles de Rais by Sidney Keyes (poem), 1945
from A Philosophical Investigation by Philip Kerr (excerpt), 1992
from The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (excerpt), 1939
from The Disinterested Killer Bill Harrigan by Jorge Luís Borges; trans. by Norman Thomas di Giovanni (excerpt), 1954
from "The Lonesome Vigilante" by John Steinbeck (excerpt), 1940
from "A Fratricide" by Franz Kafka; trans. by Willa & Edwin Muir (excerpt)
from The Psychograph by Denis Nilsen (excerpt)
+ + + Comments + + +