OxCrimes Anthology 2014 - Part 1

The Case of Death and Honey by Neil Gaiman

It was a mystery in those parts for years what had happened to the old white ghost man, the barbarian with his huge shoulder-bag. There were some who supposed him to have been murdered, and, later, they dug up the floor of Old Gao’s little shack high on the hillside, looking for treasure, but they found nothing but ash and fire-blackened tin trays.

This was after Old Gao himself had vanished, you understand, and before his son came back from Lijiang to take over the beehives on the hill.

Face Value by Stella Duffy

I was dressed up, made up, designed-up, covered-up to look exactly like all of the the girls. The girls who directed you to the entrance, who offered you a drink, who handed you the catalogue, who scuttled back and forth along the street, up the stairs, to the walls where they placed those lovely lovely red dots. I looked just like one of them.


See? I told you it was not about me.

observations: On Tuesday night, the new OxCrimes Anthology was launched in London, at Henry Sotheran, a rare-book-dealers near Piccadilly. A party in a bookshop! What could be nicer, especially as the shop is so beautiful and perfect it looks like a stageset. I was lucky enough to score an invite, went along, and had a great time. I even took some photos.

The anthology is a dreamteam of fabulous writers: you can find more details on the Oxfam website here and at Profile, the publishers, here.The 27 authors include Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, Alexander McCall Smith, Fred Vargas, Adrian McKinty and George Pelecanos. All genres covered, and all great stories, nearly all of them specially written for the book.

So: basically, try and buy it if you can. Great stories, and I promise you that the money raised for Oxfam could not be going to a better cause, it will be used for the very best purposes.  You can buy it in all the usual places, you can get it for Kindle, and it is available for Kindle in the USA. If you buy the paperback from your local Oxfam shop in the UK, more of the money goes to Oxfam...

It’s hard to pick favourites when the book is so good, but I did love Neil Gaiman’s story of Sherlock Holmes and bees, perfection. And Stella Duffy’s creepy story about an installation artist was another winner – making you think about all kinds of artists and their work. I’ll do another entry on more of the stories in a few days’ time.

This picture gives a good impression of the lovely shop, and features authors such as Christopher Fowler, Maxim Jakubowski and Anne Zouroudi, and also Sian Williams, who translates Fred Vargas (amongst others).

Sherlock Holmes might easily be looking at bees in the top picture, by the classic Holmes illustrator Sidney Paget. The second one is an American sculptor, Brenda Putnam, from the Smithsonian.

Holmes appeared in this entry with Irene Adler, and a photo of Sidney Paget himself appeared in the entry for this Holmes pastiche. More worrying artists in Claire Messud’s book, The Woman Upstairs.