In our dangerous world, offenders cannot always be brought down by the justice system. They must be stopped by someone outside the law. Some call them vigilantes; others claim they are just another brand of criminal.

In Dennis Lehane’s “The Consumers”, a suburban woman hires a hit man to target her husband, who has committed a terrible crime.

In Karin Slaughter’s “The Unremarkable Heart”, a dying woman learns the truth about a dark family secret.

In Michael Connelly’s “A Fine Mist of Blood”, LAPD Detective Harry Bosch discovers a witness who will lead him to the doorstep of a hardened killer.

And in Lee Child’s “The Hollywood I Remember”, an assassin gets his long overdue comeuppance

‘Vengeance’ is a collection of twenty-one short stories, ten selected by Lee Child, one written by Lee Child and ten selected from anonymised submissions from members of Mystery Writers of America.

I’ve been dipping into the collection for the past couple of weeks and it’s kept me well entertained.

My favourite story and probably the nastiest in the collection was from Karin Slaughter. It reminded me to pull her novel, ‘We Are All Guilty Here’, to the top of my TBR pile.

I gave another seven stories four stars. Only four stories got less than three stars.

I use collections like these to look for writers I haven’t read before. This time, I added books by five authors to my TBR pile:
‘Fake’ by Twist Phelan,
‘The Downside’ by Mike Cooper,
‘Sweet Ladies of Death’ by Steve Liskow,
‘Legitimate Business’ by Michael Niemann,
and ‘Old Wounds and New’ by Darrell James.

I’ll be looking for more Mystery Writers of America Presents collections.

Below I’ve rated and commented on each of the twenty-one stories.

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THE FOURTEENTH JUROR by Twist Phelan ★★★★

A great opening story to a collection about vengeance. Tight, clean writing and a plot that reeled me in, paragraph by paragraph. As Twist Phelan intended, I thought I was being clever and seeing what was really going on in this twisty story. I even felt smug about it. Until I got to the end and realised that I’d been played every step of the way and hadn’t gotten close to guessing the truth. I didn’t feel cheated; I felt entertained. So entertained that I bought ‘Fake’, the first book in her series about corporate spy, Finn Teller.

LOST AND FOUND by Zoë Sharp ★★★

An atmospheric (seedy, dark, doomed and blood-soaked) story with a clever twist and strong imagery. Telling the story using the second-person point of view lessened its impact for me. I understand that it helped enable the plot twists by obscuring identities, but even in a story as short as this, it quickly began to feel laboured. 

THE MOTHER by Alafair Burke ★★

I found this one hard to believe, I liked that the twist at the end was subtle but important. The court scenes worked, But I never got inside the main character’s head.

BLIND JUSTICE by Jim Fusilli ★★

This one wasn’t for me. Most gangster stories aren’t for me, especially ones that treat the violence that they inflict on each other as cute or amusing. The plot had inverted the normal storylines in a way I think was meant to be surprising but wasn’t. The writing was fine, but the tone was glib.

THE CONSUMERS by Dennis Lehane ★★★★

This read like a relatively straightforward revenge story with a possible twist on who is getting revenge on whom and for what. It was the quality of the writing that pulled me in. The story was told with a fluent confidence that let me relax into it because I knew I was in good hands. Most of the time was spent building a picture of Nicole’s life with her abusive-but-sorry-for-it-afterwards rich, dishonest investment banker husband, Alan. There was no clumsy infodumping, and very little telling. 

The picture was built from Nicole’s memories and reflections. From Nicole’s point of view, it was a picture of Alan and his faults, but Lehane turned it into a picture of a couple living in empty, loveless luxury, paid for by preying on others. 

The ending was surprising. The calm, low-key nature of the violence made it somehow more vengeful, more personal than a bloodier scene would have. It was also satisfying in a way that I ought to feel ashamed of but don’t. 

MOONSHINER’S LAMENT by Rick McMahan ★★★

I liked the tone of the storytelling. It brought the period to life and got me inside the protagonist’s head. I liked that he wasn’t just a tough guy, that his desire for revenge was driven by grief rather than machismo and that he was aware that he and the ‘plan’ he intended to implement were both a little crazy. The ending seemed a little sudden to me. I’d have liked to have known what our ‘hero’ did once the adrenaline left him. That I want to know that is probably a sign of a story well told. 

RIVER SECRET by Anne Swardson ★★★

I liked the vivid but low-key storytelling style. It matched the personality of the main character, who presented a calm, harmless surface to the world that masked a born-of-trauma watchfulness and suspicion that eventually turned into cold vengeance. 

HOT SUGAR BLUES by Steve Liskow ★★★★

This one sizzled with tension. I enjoyed how my slowly growing awareness that I was watching something dangerous unfold kept pace with my increasing dislike for the superstar performer. Telling the story as a first-person account from the manager was a masterstroke; it revealed the manager’s character and the performer’s, shared crucial pieces of history, and amplified the sense of watching a predatory performance. The plot was clever, and the revenge was satisfying.

THE FINAL BALOT by Brendan DuBois ★★★

I liked the efficiency of the prose. Tension was established from the first page, and distrust wasn’t far behind it. The plot was horribly plausible, and it seemed unlikely that any vengeance could be achieved. The twist at the end was clever, but I didn’t quite believe it. I think it qualified as retaliation, but it didn’t seem to me to be vengeance. 

AFRICA WILL ALWAYS NEED GUNS by Michael Niemann ★★★★

I was impressed by how rigorously this was imagined, how unflinching the depiction of apparently unassailable corruption was, and how clearly drawn Valentin Vermeulen, the beleaguered investigator, was. This is the kind of story where no one comes out clean but where it’s possible, if you have the stomach for getting dirty, to make the world slightly less broken.

I was so taken by the story that I searched for Niemann’s novels and found that he subsequently wrote four novel-length thrillers featuring Valentin Vermeulen.

THE UNREMARKABLE HEART by Karin Slaughter ★★★★★

A brilliantly written, chillingly dark, suspenseful story where the vengeance wrought is evil, and you won’t see it coming. The prose grabbed me from the first sentence. The set-up is original and tense. With each reveal, the situation worsens. The ending is nasty and perfect.

IT AIN’T RIGHT by Michelle Gagnon ★★★

Some marriages have reefs, just below the surface, known but unacknowledged, unexplored, constantly navigated around and hidden from strangers. This is the story of one of those navigations. The storytelling is oblique but evocative. A slight story that, like a splinter, slips into the reader’s imagination and festers. 

SILENT JUSTICE by C. E. Lawrence ★★

This was too slight for me. The riffs on confessions and their consequences were interesting but the priest didn’t seem real to me.

EVEN A BLIND MAN by Darrell James ★★★★

There was a lot packed into this story, and yet it never felt rushed or as if it was pushing information at me. It brought the characters and the situation into focus and then kept sharpening that focus in surprising ways that made the situation darker and the characters more complex. I found Earl Lilly fascinating. I’d like to read more about him. I’m thinking about getting ‘Old Wounds and New’ because there’s another story about him in it. 

THE GENERAL by Janice Law ★★★★

This was beautifully done. The vengeance was subtle. The hatred involved was palpable. The character of the general was disclosed and, in part, defined by the suspense generated by the gardener’s odd mix of passivity and threat. The pacing was perfect.

A FINE MIST OF BLOOD by Michael Connelly ★★★

A little slice of Harry Bosch doing his thing. This time he’s set on the scent by a new data analysis technique, but his follow-through is all hunch, instinct and deviousness. There wasn’t much by way of mystery, but the ending was engineered to deliver suspense, a surprise or two and a spectacular conclusion.

LEVERAGE by MIke Cooper ★★★★

The cool, reasonable tone of the storytelling contrasts with the main character’s deep, even more reasonable rage, making his actions both unpredictable and deeply satisfying. 

The story gives a careful, unexaggerated summary of the damage the law allows a predatory venture capitalist to inflict on whole communities as, without fear or rancour, they asset strip for profit, driving others into poverty. I loved that, despite the harm done to him, the main character’s initial driver is not vengeance but a simple need to comprehend why someone already fabulously rich would behave in this immoral, harmful way to gain a few extra millions. 

His actions, when he finally understood, seemed entirely justified to me.

THE HOTLINE by Dreda Say Mitchell ★★★

This was fun, mostly because it was both clever and unexpected. I enjoyed watching the quiet, accepting, non-confrontational Muslim woman finally find her anger, combine it with her creativity, and her daring to unleash a well-justified revenge.

BLOOD AND SUNSHINE by Adam Meyer ★★

Great opening line: “Most people don’t believe in pure evil, and neither did I until I met five-year-old Dylan Brewster.” Sadly, I found the rest of the story to be too slick for its own good. I didn’t see the twist at the end coming, but by that point, I was no longer invested in the story because I didn’t believe in the main character.

IN PERSONA CHRISTI by Orest Stelmach ★★

Good opening line: “Two days before the killers came for Maria, a gang of teenagers rampaged across church property”. The story reminded me of a 70s Rock Concept Album: a clever structure to the central conceit but with little emotional engagement. This is the second priest in this collection whom I found myself unable to believe in.

THE HOLLYWOOD I REMEMBER by Lee Child ★★★

This opens with “The Hollywood I remember was a cold, hard, desperate place.” The story is being told by a cold, hard, disappasionate man, looking back without regret at his career as a killer. It’s a grim, uncompromising story. The vengeance wrought is also cold, hard and desperate.