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reviewsbylola's review against another edition
informative
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.0
rebus's review against another edition
5.0
My admission of bias is that the crime novels of Jim Thompson and James M. Cain are to me among the greatest literature in all of human history, particularly those of Thompson, one of the few authors in human history writing from the perspective of the underclass. Crime is the soul of lust and happiness lies only in that which excites, and the only thing that excites is crime, at least according to deSade. I can't help but agree in our fascist world where all the serious and damaging crime has always been done by the State (indeed, it is explicitly stated in many tales from the 1800s, when policing began, that even then cops were wholly corrupt, looking for someone to punish rather than looking at the facts and seeking the truth).
There are too many highlights to choose from, but I was most delighted by the tale from the Bocaccio and another from the bible and the stories from Joyce and Greek myth, not typically sources that are called genre fiction, but crime tales nonetheless!
The best of all the Russ Kick books.
There are too many highlights to choose from, but I was most delighted by the tale from the Bocaccio and another from the bible and the stories from Joyce and Greek myth, not typically sources that are called genre fiction, but crime tales nonetheless!
The best of all the Russ Kick books.
karenchase's review against another edition
4.0
This is a pretty wide-ranging graphic sampler of crime and mystery fiction, spanning almost the entire history of literary creation. Everything from ancient Greek tragedy to the Bible to Agatha Christie and Edgar Allan Poe are represented, in a variety of graphic styles. Each piece has a nice introduction, to both the original work and the graphic (and sometimes textual) adaptation. There are a whole bunch of these volumes, and I'll probably continue to delve in, but in some ways they are like short story collections, with some pieces only a couple of pages long, some longer, and others really like annotated paintings, with only the barest interpretation of the original work. It's an interesting approach, though I do tend to favour long-form literature, so I'm not sure how much I got out of it. I did share a couple of snips with others though.
revslick's review
3.0
The artists are given free reign to create a section of great crime and mystery and their renditions and are a 5/5 though many were so short it left me wanting for more 2/5. Probably the top aim was to give the reader a hunger for more, which it did. As I read each vignette, I reminisced the stories that I had read and added to my list of new worlds to explore.
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