What a strangely uneven collection for what is essentially a year's best. Only one story here, Phil Lovesey's "Homework", was even shortlisted for the British Crime Writers Association's Dagger award (it actually won, and is one of the better stories in the book). Perhaps 2009 was not a particularly good year for British crime fiction or, more likely, my taste is quite different from Mr. Jakubowski's.

Few of the stories are of the more traditional "sleuth discovers a crime and finds the perpetrator". Indeed, they are the very much in the minority. It seemed, though I haven't actually counted, that most of the stories were actually about criminals committing a crime. Several others were about the victim of a crime reacting to what has happened. The vast majority also seemed to be trying to be "literary" rather than embracing the genre. Many also included a twist, but alas it was almost always the exact same twist: narrator/protagonist is the criminal. A few stories are also little more than vignettes or even single scenes that do little to satisfy the reader.

Still, with one exception, the first few stories aren't bad and the last 10 or so are well worth reading. Unfortunately, there is a lot of chaff among the wheat. ( )

Mammoth by name, mammoth by nature - this collection has 42 stories in total, many of which come from well-known names, with a good sprinkling of new and emerging writers. Exactly the sort of thing short story fans would be looking for.

Preferring the darker side of the genre, there was lots to satisfy this reader in this collection, but there's also entries from the lighter side - how could there not be with writers like Alexander McCall Smith. In this collection you'll find a couple of entries by Ian Rankin and Peter Lovesey and others from Mick Herron, Denise Mina, Edward Marston, Marilyn Todd, Kate Atkinson, Stuart MacBride, David Hewson, Alexander McCall Smith, Nigel Bird, Robert Barnard, Lin Anderson, Allan Guthrie, A.L. Kennedy, Simon Kernick, Roz Southey, Andrew Taylor, Sheila Quigley, Declan Burke, Keith McCarthy, Christopher Brookmyre, Gerard Brennan, Matthew J. Elliott, Colin Bateman, Ray Banks, Simon Brett, Adrian Magson, Jay Stringer, Amy Myers, Nick Quantrill, Stephen Booth, Paul Johnston, Zoe Sharp, Paul D. Brazill, Louise Welsh, Liza Cody, Peter Turnbull and Nicholas Royle. You can probably imagine with a lineup like that, just how good each of these stories is to have been included. The range is wide, the subject and handling different, and frankly, this is just a terrific collection.

Just a quick warning - a few stories in this collection are duplicated in the little collection CRIMESPOTTING I read a while ago. No big deal - they were all well worth reading a second time. ( )