Last year, I was invited to take part in an exciting anthology of short stories from Crippen & Landru Press, featuring some of the top crime writers of our time.
This is a fun, quirky anthology with a Golden Age feel, called Double-Crossing Van Dine, and it’s edited by Art Taylor, Donna Andrews, and Greg Herron, with an introduction by the wonderful Catriona McPherson. Each writer has to break one of S.S. Van Dine’s famous rules for detective fiction!
Van Dine’s 20 rules were in the same spirit as Ronald Knox’s ’10 commandments’ and focus on playing fair. We also had to play fair, but still break a key rule. I can’t wait to read the other 19 stories, which include offerings from Tom Mead, Elly Griffiths, Vaseem Khan, and more.
My own story, ‘Confess Your Secret!’ breaks rule number 5, which forbids the detective solving the case by chance or sudden intuition. If you’ve read my Jessica Brick stories, you’ll know I like breaking this rule — while still making the whole mystery solvable. It’s set in Ipswich in 1930, and the crime takes place in one of those new-fangled telephone boxes.
Find out more and pre-order the anthology here: https://crippen-and-landru.myshopify.com/products/double-crossing-van-dine
JC Bernthal 