The Plot Thickens Ed. By Mary Higgins Clark (Each story must include: a thick steak, a thick fog, and a thick book.) (4 stars)
I found this one on a recent browsing expedition at the local public library. It has been closed for several months because of Covid and after a partial reopening had various restrictions on the public being able to make use of this resource, so I was very happy to be able to go there again and peruse the shelves with most of the restrictions lifted. I was looking for a particular volume in the mystery section and this book caught my attention. It was a work done as a fund raiser for Literacy Partners in 1997, which seeks to combat illiteracy through local and national reading assistance programs. Popular authors of mystery and suspense stories submitted short stories for the book. It is still available from online used book sellers and might even be sitting in your local library’s mystery section like it was in mine.
As I have stated before, with every story collection you get some very good ones, some moderately good ones and a few duds. Even though they can be somewhat hit or miss, there are usually enough good ones to make a story collection book worth reading as a whole. I am able to sample work from new authors that I may not have known about before and if I like their style, I can read more works by them.
Previously, I read through everything when I had these collections (and sometimes suffered through it), but now I am getting more selective with what I read and if there’s a dud, I won’t waste my time anymore. I just move on the next story. I found one dud in this collection. After suffering through trying to read it for a few days and being unsuccessful, I just skipped it and happily read through the rest of the book quite quickly. (The dud was Thick-Headed by Walter Mosley, I found it hard to follow, it dragged along, and the speaking dialect used by the characters just made it annoying.)
What I loved about this collection was the stipulation that the authors had to use three things in their stories- a thick steak, a thick book, and a thick fog. It was great to discover how these particular items were used in all the stories in this volume. It was reading and having a treasure hunt put together.
If you have designs on trying to do a bit of authoring yourself, pick this one up and study how the different authors worked those particular things into their stories in all kinds of ways, and then try making a story yourself using those three things as well. There is always something new to discover when reading! ( )

It promotes itself as a short story collection written by mystery/suspense writers and that's what it delivers. Some stories were "meh" and some I really enjoyed and would like to see fleshed out to novella/novel length. Overall a good read that is worth picking up. ( )

This anthology contains stories by a lot of big name writing including Mary Higgins Clark, Janet Evanovich, Ann Rule, Lawrence Block, Edna Buchanan, Carol Higgins Clark, Nelson AND Lauren DeMille, Linda Fairstein, Walter Mosley, Nancy Prickard, and Donald E. Westlake.

A great collection of short stories from a BIG variety of authors (with various styles). :)

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Great short stories ( )

Really funny Stephanie Plum short story in this collection! ( )