McBain Produces Compelling 'Transgressions'

Review of TRANSGRESSIONS (Forge Books 2005)
Editor, Ed McBain; multiple authors

In the foreword to TRANSGRESSIONS, Ed McBain says it was a bit of a challenge finding 10 authors to contribute to a collection of crime novellas. I mean, who even writes novellas anymore? Yet somehow, McBain (or Evan Hunter, to use his birth name) was able to do it.

The result is a lengthy--783 pages, to be exact--and ambitious work that will probably stand as one of a kind, perhaps forever, since I doubt anyone else will undertake such a project in the future.

I had originally checked this out of the library because I wanted to read the contribution by Walter Mosley called "Archibald Lawless, Anarchist at Large: Walking the Line." Despite my more limited original intention, I decided instead to start with the first story to see if it agreed with me. It was a humorous crime story by Donald Westlake, who I'd read before and hadn't particularly cottoned to--but this time, I liked him better. Maybe I just like Westlake in smaller doses. Maybe the novella form forced him to get to the point faster, so the plot moved more quickly, engaged me faster. Whatever it was, it convinced me to try the next one, too.

Each story, I'm happy to report, is excellent in its own way. Anne Perry turns in a wonderful suspense tale of a political hostage situation in Ireland--a situation that forces the main character to grow and adapt to the situation, deepening the story to make it more than just the average suspense yarn. Joyce Carol Oates writes a tale of horror and suspense involving mean girls (not usually my favorite plot device, but one that worked for me here) and the tumult they cause others when they victimize an innocent girl. Sharyn McCrumb shows the lurid lengths doctors in the old South were driven to, in order to get bodies for medical students to work on--and the effect it had on one slave's life.

And Walter Mosley--well, I confess, as good as all the other authors were--a stellar combo that also included Ed McBain, Stephen King, John Farris, Jeffery Deaver and Lawrence Block--Mosley's story was still my favorite. Archibald Lawless is a, um, memorable character--intriguing, frightening and encouraging by turns to the protagonist, Felix Orlean, a college student Lawless hires to work as his "scribe," but who ends up unwittingly on the wrong end of a murder investigation. One in which Lawless is somehow involved, yet in which he is able to protect Orlean. They end up in a strange and wonderful relationship that Orlean is not quite sure he wants from the start, leading to a series of peculiar and sometimes deadly events.

I liked this book a lot. The stories all kept me interested, turning the pages. However, I must confess that 10 novellas felt like a lot. Normally, I wouldn't read 10 crime novels in a row--I usually like to mix a bit of mainstream or other genres in with my crime fiction reading. I loved the stories in this book. McBain may have rushed the editing a bit, as I caught several errors throughout, but they're good stories anyway. Nonetheless, I would recommend (unless you're the type that reads nothing but crime fiction) that you read these novellas two or three at a time, with something different in between to "cleanse" the literary "palate."

If it hadn't been a library book, I'd probably have done that.