FACE OFF
Edited by David Baldacci
Simon and Schuster
356 pgs
After reviewing the first-ever fictional private-eyes crossover last time, we thought it only fitting to follow with this team-up anthology produced by the International Thriller Writers in 2014. It is a collection of eleven stories wherein two heroes from various thriller series meet as written by their creators. As Richard S. Prather and Stephen Marlowe proved back in 1960, it really is a very cool idea as twenty-two writers agreed in this collection of eleven top-notch stories.
It’s been our belief that today’s thriller writers are our modern pulp scribes, and these twenty-two cement that fact emphatically with their fast-paced, action-crammed gems. We don’t claim to be familiar with all of them, but characters like Jack Reacher, Special Agent Pendergast, and Detective Harry Bosch are extremely well known.
When Michael Connelly’s Bosch shows up in Bean Town and crosses paths with Dennis Lehane’s cop, Patrick Kenzie, you know something unusual is going to happen. Then, just a few short tales later, Preston and Child’s Special Agent Pendergast finds himself confronting R.L. Stine’s Goosebump world and the eerie Ventriloquist Dummy Slappy. That one is guaranteed to give you nightmares. Of course, everyone’s taste is different, but not to worry. In this collection, there is a pairing to delight every one of you thriller aficionados.
Our personal favorite was the last entry, “Good and Valuable Consideration,” in which Lee Child’s Jack Reacher ends up in a Boston sports bar to watch a Yankees vs. Red Sox baseball game and runs into Joseph Finder’s Nick Heller. Reacher’s a Yankee fan, Heller roots for the Sox. Then there’s the poor slob caught in the middle of them. Easily one of the best and funniest short stories we’ve ever read. This book is at Amazon, folks. Go grab a copy…now!
