Win, Lose or Die: Stories from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786703172 ISBN 13: 9780786703173

Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub, 1996

Synopsis

A unique anthology, featuring works from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine gathers together a page-turning collection of stories where the stakes are always life and death, and the games range from poker and chess to Scrabble and crosswords.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

This collection is old-fashioned in a double sense. All 26 stories are reprints, half over 25 years old. And since all of them feature games of skill or chance, most turn on a single clever irony or reversal--in poker (Forrest K. Perrin, Anthony Boucher, Thomas B. Costain (as ``Pat Hand''), Bill Pronzini), bridge (Agatha Christie), craps (John Steinbeck), chess (Henry Slesar, Lord Dunsany, Harry Kemelman, David Kaufman, Theodore Mathieson, R.L. Stevens, George C. Chesbro, Stanley Ellin), Scrabble (John Philip Cohane, H.R.F. Keating), Go (Sara Paretsky), Trivial Pursuit (Robert Loy), numbers (Robert L. Fish), acrostics (Phil Davis), crosswords (Ruth Rendell), fortune-telling (James Holding), the stock market (Ellery Queen), and a variation of the old Murder Game (Nedra Tyre). Perhaps the cleverest tales perhaps are by Jack Ritchie and Lawrence Block, while many of the others are nearly interchangeable. One complaint: Such familiar fare ought to show a stronger editorial hand than veteran anthologists Manson (Murder by the Book, 1995; Kingpins, 1992, etc.) and Scarborough display here. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

Dangerous games are played out in this compilation of mystery stories taken from the pages of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Chess, offering an ideal analogy for the strategies between murderer and victim, is superbly represented in such tales as "Gentlemen's Agreement" by Lawrence Block and "King's Knight Gambit Declined" by R.L. Stevens. Card playing, another favorite of mystery writers, is the attraction in "Card Sense" by the lesser-known James Holding. Craps takes an unlucky roll in John Steinbeck's forgettable "The Crapshooter," but the art of trivia is played to its finest in "Life, Death and Other Trivial Concerns" by Robert Loy. Scrabble spells the solution in both H.R.F. Keating's masterful "Scrabble Babble Dabble" and John Philip Cohane's "The Scrabble Clue." Some esteemed detectives, such as Agatha Christie's Poirot ("Beware the King of Clubs") and Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski ("The Takamoku Joseki") don't fare as well as some of the newcomers, but the variety of talents thrown together here makes for a mystery lover's delight.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0786703172
• ISBN 13: 9780786703173
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256
• Editor: Manson Cynthia, Scarborough Constance