GET THE BEST SEAT IN THE HOUSE…

…for the most entertaining detective fiction from Hollywood to Broadway. The curtain’s going up on murders that ought to be in pictures, killings that deserve a standing ovation, and crimes that take center stage for excitement.

Cast in starring roles are performers like the ingenue who discovers that the competition is murder, a has-been who makes his final exit with a bang, a grand opera fan who finds poison on the program, and a soap opera ham who writes a deadly change into the script.

From recording studios to the vaudeville circuit, from California back lots to the New York stage, this outstanding collection of the world’s best puzzlers and whodunits, shockers and suspense proves there’s no business llike show business for a four-star mystery treat.

ISAAC ASIMOV • WILLIAM BANKIER • GEORGE BAXT • ROBERT BLOCH • LIONEL BOOKER • GARY BRANDNER • JON L. BREEN • MICHAEL SCOTT CAIN • KARL DETZER • GEORGIANA EIDUKAS • RON GOULART • TEX HILL • EDWARD D. HOCH • FRANCIS M. NEVINS, JR. • ELLERY QUEEN • HENRY SLESAR • JULIAN SYMONS • MICHAEL UNDERWOOD

Another mystery anthology, this one centering about—well, I don’t need to actually tell you, do I?

As usual, I don’t feel that I can fairly judge this book because it’s of a genre I don’t care for much. The stories here are on the short side, overall (there are 18 stories in 240 pages, or thereabouts), which makes them go faster but also lend themselves less readily to a quick, superficial reading (which is what I tend to give them) since you have a lot to keep track of in a few pages. Asimov is in this anthology in the form of “Mystery Tune,” a rather weak Union Club mystery, which doesn’t do much for the book as a whole. I’d just as soon skip it, but if one happens to be a mystery buff who wants to read a book about crime and the arts—well, I would be willing to recommend this one. I guess.

Contents

“Mystery Tune” aka “Death Song”