Superb short stories. A must read for thriller fans. ( )

This book was published in support of Edinburgh's OneCity Trust, a charity fighting inequality and exclusion. It includes ten short stories that were specifically written for it by the authors Lin Anderson, Kate Atkinson, Margaret Atwood, Christopher Brookmyre, John Burnside, Isla Dewar, A.L. Kennedy, Denise Mina, Ian Rankin and James Robertson.
All of the stories are set in Edinburgh and deal with crime, but they vary a lot - from the humorous to the gory, from murder to corporate crime. There are even a ghost story and a historical one.
As with most short story collections, I liked these to various degrees. Some appeared too silly to me, but some were excellent.

The best story, in my opinion, is Chris Takes The Bus by Denise Mena, which is about a boy leaving Edinburgh (I cannot say more because that would be a spoiler - this story is the shortest in the collection).
I also really liked Carlo Blue by John Burnside, a story about a man who is stood up by a date. Something unexpected happens afterwards.
The historical story, Recompense by James Robertson, has an atmosphere of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde about it. It is told from the point of view of a doctor. One of his colleagues is found dead on the street and the circumstances are strange.

The book also features an introduction by Irvine Welsh. ( )

This was highly recommended to me by my Mum, as one of the best anthologies of Scottish crime fiction out there. I enjoyed it, but no more than that, maybe I wasn't in a short story mood when I picked it up or something. The standout story for e was Chris Brookmyres one about dodgy Pharma, because I liked the subject matter (although it did have the air of a personal hobby horse)
Pleasant but not outstanding. ( )

Patchy, as is the nature of this type of anthology. Glimmerings of genius writing floating amongst numerous so-so offerings. Unfortunately it's too long since I read this for me to me more specific.

10 Apr 2013: I had this on my "not to keep" shelf due to the patchiness of the collection, but today I reread the Atwood and Rankin contributions. Atwood's story is a bit of fun and not up with her best, but Rankin's story, 'Driven', is stunning. I think I have to keep this just for the one story! ( )

I think I'll just keep saying this until I run out of breath completely - but really, the world needs more quality collections of Crime Short Stories. CRIMESPOTTING, a fabulous little volume put together as a fund raiser for The ONECITY Trust, is subtitled "An Edinburgh Crime Collection". It features stories by lesser and well known authors including (in alphabetical order) Lin Anderson, Kate Atkinson, Margaret Atwood, Christopher Brookmyre, John Burnside, Isla Dewar, A.L. Kennedy, Denise Mina, Ian Rankin and James Robertson. (There are some stories here which go on to be included in the Mammoth Book of Best British Crime which I'm going to mention in a review soonish). The requirement for inclusion was that the story included a "crime" and was set in Edinburgh. The results are remarkedly diverse.

Needless to say I've been reading a few short story collections recently. Mostly because I find them such a fascinating form of writing, although I also find them almost invaluable for filling in the dreaded "waiting time" that seems to go with life these days. One thing I'm increasingly becoming aware of is that a really really good short story can't be as easy to write as you would think. A Crime short story in particular still has to provide a reader with some of the elements of the genre that you expect - a crime / investigation / resolution / explanation / consideration / illumination and so on.

What was immediately obvious in CRIMESPOTTING is that there is an incredibly high standard of story-telling in each of these entries - although there are obviously also absolute standout entries. To be honest I'd have a bit of trouble voting for my specific favourite as a lot of them appealed immensely. Luckily, there's probably something for fans of all sorts of different sub-genres.

For this reader, CRIMESPOTTING (and The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime for that matter) really were a master class in short story reading. Good enough to go back and reread many of the entries, CRIMESPOTTING became a permanent resident of the car glovebox a while ago. It will head back there after this review has been written as flicking back through the book there's a couple of entries I'd like to read again. ( )