From Publishers Weekly
Sisters Pam and Mary O'Shaughnessy use the pen name Perri O'Shaughnessy for their Nina Reilly legal thrillers as well as for this uneven debut collection of 19 short suspense stories, only one of which involves Nina Reilly and is the only "fifty-fifty collaboration" between the pair. "The Long Walk" fittingly leads, since it was published before their first novel,
Motion to Suppress (1995). There are two homages: a Gertrude Stein parody, "Gertrude Stein Solves a Mystery," which is less than successful, and "His Master's Hand," which nicely mimics the style of Dostoyevski's
Notes from Underground. "Dead Money" crams a novel's worth of twists and deductions into a short story. In "Tiny Angels," an FBI agent nabs a kidnapper thanks to his wife's casual but perceptive observations. Paul van Wagoner, an investigator in the Nina Reilly novels, does brilliant work in "Success Without College." Series fans may enjoy the challenge presented in the sisters' introduction, trying to figure out which sister wrote which story.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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From Booklist
California sisters Mary and Pamela O'Shaughnessy, who write under the pseudonym Perri, have parlayed their respective talents as editor-writer and attorney into a popular series of legal thrillers starring Nina Reilly, who makes a brief appearance in one of the 19 stories in this stellar collection, which runs the gamut from psychological thriller to traditional detective yarn. The sisters explain in an introduction that, unlike their novels, which are fifty-fifty collaborations, all of the stories in this collection except one ("Juggernaut") are individual endeavors; who did what is also delineated in the introduction. Among the most memorable are "Gertrude Stein Solves a Mystery," a laid-back, stylized "mostly-true recounting" of a strange incident in Stein's life, and "The Furnace Man," tinged with the sort of shivery horror that Alfred Hitchcock exploited so well on television. Unreliable narrators, historical incidents, and horror grown out of ordinary life can be found aplenty in this entertaining collection, sure to please Perri's fans as well as devotees of the likes of the venerable
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.
Stephanie ZvirinCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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