Miss Darkness: The Great Short Crime Fiction of Fredric Brown

I only discovered Fredric Brown in the last seven years or so and he almost instantly became my favorite author. I immediately wanted to read everything he ever wrote. It was a sad day for me when I realized that dang near everything he ever wrote is long, LONG out of print and some of his work is impossible to find. That did not stop me from buying anything I could get my hot little hands on but the downside is that everything I buy is ancient, falling apart and pretty pricey (some are VERY expensive and simply out of my price range). I do searches on a regular basis just in case new publications come out, and there are indeed a couple of good collections that are in print and easily available but of course not everything is included in those publications.I purchased Miss Darkness the moment I saw it on Amazon and I was ecstatic! It has beautiful and colorful artwork on the front and back cover and the pages are printed on smooth, pretty, high quality paper. Definitely a great book to display at home where people can see it! The book itself is rather large so it will not be the easiest to lug around or read in bed or the like but that is A-Okay with me. :) One great thing aside from the nice quality of the paper is that the text is not too close to the center of the pages, which is sometimes an annoying issue with bigger books. Despite the large size of the book the fact that the print is set out just a bit makes it more comfortable to read.Overall good quality as far as the physical book itself and great collection of short stories and novels--including some that I have never been able to track down for any reasonable price or condition. YAY! Highly recommended!STORIES INCLUDED:Miss DarknessLittle Boy LostGood Night, Good KnightA Matter of DeathGet Out of TownGranny's BirthdayNightmare in YellowCry SilenceI'll Cut Your Throat Again, KathleenA Little White LyeThe JokeLittle Apple Hard to PeelDon't Look Behind YouLife and FireThe Shaggy Dog MurdersThe Spherical GhoulMoon Over MurderThe Djinn MurderHandbook for HomicideThe Jabberwocky MurdersThe Cat from SiamSatan One-and-a-HalfThe Case of The Dancing SandwichesThe Laughing ButcherDeath is a NoiseThe Little LambMurder Set to MusicThe Freak Show MurdersThe Wench is DeadThe Pickled PunksObit for Obie

This print-on-demand book is almost too big for its britches. The sheer size and heft of the book prove almost too much for the budget materials CreateSpace uses in their POD products. I'm about halfway through this book, and the binding is seriously torquing. The covers have long since curled away from the insides.It's what's inside that counts, to quote an old ad campaign, and this bounty of classic Fredric Brown short stories and novellas is a movable feast. "Miss Darkness" the book makes a compelling case that Brown's most focused work was in his shorter pieces. I love his novels, and would defend some of them, such as the little-read "One For the Road," without exception. But the short fiction didn't allow for padding, rambling or some of the other peccadilloes of Brown's long-form work.The haste of execution is sometimes revealed in stretches of expository dialogue, and too much use of passive verb tenses. When Brown is on, he's so on that you lose yourself in his passion. His was the religion of the search, of revelation, and in stories such as "The Case of the Dancing Sandwiches" he achieves a kind of pulp apotheosis. Once I'm deep into a Brown work, I literally cannot put it down.Bruin's volume has generally handsome typography (I'd switch out the Teen Light font for another less obtrusive one, but that's just me), with occasional typos, and at least one passage that is repeated, which caused a momentary brain-fart for me, 'til I realized what happened. Having published five POD books myself, I know how stealthy typos and formatting woes can be.I've been reading on this book since before Christmas, and it appears to be a guarantee of Brown bliss 'til at least Easter. I hope the binding holds out! Here's a book that should've been a hardcover--something CreateSpace's press doesn't yet offer--but if you handle it gently, you'll get a megadose of Fredric Brown delight.I'll definitely look into some of Bruin's other POD books, which include some titles by the under-rated David Dodge and Edward Anderson. Don't let my technical nit-picks deter you--this book is a wonderful thing!

There have been "Best Of" collections of Fredric Brown's work before, in the fields of both mystery and science fiction, but this one is different because it focuses more on his mid-length fiction. Most of the stories reprinted here are novella length, and are superior examples of their kind.I personally think Brown's crime fiction is better than his science fiction, mainly because a clever idea is not sufficient for a story. Something like "Puppet Show", as good as it is, would require a bit more telling if it were a crime story.FYI, the stories "The Jabberwocky Murders", "The Pickled Punks", and "Obit For Obie" were all expanded into novels, unread by me (respectively "NIght of the Jabberwock", "Madball", and "The Deep End").If you get this one and the collection "Blue Murder" you'll have most of Brown's best work. Highly recommended.

Fredric Brown should be known as one of the greats of noire mystery, up there with Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, and it is a damned shame that he is so often overlooked. It took me several years to track down copies of his Ed and Am Hunter mystery series, so I'm so grateful to the people that compiled the complete anthology of his mystery short stories! It was clearly a huge endeavor, with I'm assuming the use of scanning software, since there are the occasional typos, but nothing that distracts from the quality of writing and storytelling.

Volume imperdibile per appassionati del poco conosciuto Brown. Maestro del racconto con finale a sorpresa.

I am a writer of hard boiled detective stories myself and consider Fredric Brown one of the best writers in this genre. Every story in this collection is different and a very good introduction to his novels. Fredric Brown is best known as a science fiction writer but his realistic and suspenseful noir novels are even better and give an intriguing picture of his time. These are the mean streets and boarding houses he himself lived in. And Miss darkness is a very well chosen title as you'll see when you read the first story. If you like these stories try his Fabulous Clipjoint which is vintage Brown indeed.

This hefty tome contains almost all the shorter & medium length works written by Fredric Brown (a master in Science Fiction, and that's why very few people tend to remember what a great writer he is in other genres as well), which deals with crime & detection/punishment. I use the word "almost" grudgingly, because the wonderful series of books named as "Fredric Brown Mystery Library" has vanished from market, in the process obliterating the prospects of trying to compare the corpus of that series with this tome. Plus, due to its emphasis on the word 'short', it omits all the works showcasing Ed & Ambrose Hunter. Nevertheless, this is a very good collection, and by perusing it you can get to read some of the most intelligent, dark an yet witty stories written in English. Highly Recommended.