Christmas at The Mysterious Bookshop [Hardcover]

Otto Penzler is the proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop, an iconic New York City store for decades now; certainly if I ever get to NYC, it's the first, and fourth, and ninth place I'll check out. Some 17 years ago, he began commissioning authors to write a short story for Christmas, which he gave in bound copies to longstanding customers; "Christmas at The Mysterious Bookshop" is a hardcover collection bringing those stories, from 1993 to 2009, together in one volume. The requirements were that the story had to be set at Christmas, had to include a mystery and had to have at least some of the action take place in the real store. Stories by Donald E. Westlake, George Baxt, Edward D. Hoch, Ron Goulart, Lawrence Block, Jeremiah Healy, Ed McBain, S.J. Rozan, Anne Perry, Michael Malone, Thomas H. Cook, Lisa Michelle Atkinson, Rupert Holmes, Charles Ardai, Andrew Klavan, Jonathan Santlofer and Mary Higgins Clark are included; as always with such collections, I liked some stories more than others, but all of them were professional and well-written, and most of them were quite funny too. Mr. Penzler himself figures in almost all of the stories, so much so that in his introduction he felt compelled to note that while he is himself a real person, the characters bearing his name in these various stories are not. This is a quick read, perfect for Christmas holiday evenings (by the fire if you have one, which alas I don't) when you're up for a few short and murderous outings in your reading life. My only quibble is that no biographies of the authors are provided; although I know most of these names, some of them are unfamiliar to me and it would have been nice to learn a little bit about them in addition to reading their contributions to this very wonderful tradition - I wish other bookstores would do the same for their customers! Recommended.