Murder by Magic: Twenty Tales of Crime and the Supernatural

It is very rare that I am able to say that I enjoyed every story in an anthology, but that is the case for this volume. Many of the stories have a humorous quality, not so much laugh out loud as being pastiches of various mundane mystery and other genres. There is a great diversity in the types of stories. The characterizations and story-telling are uniformly good to outstanding. The works tend to be set in somewhat feudal cultures, as fantasy usually is, but others are quite modern or otherwise set in familiar times and places (if you credit the existence of magic.) Worth reading both for fantasy aficionados and mystery fans.

This superb twenty collection anthology runs the mystery gamut but has the common thread as stated by Rosemary Edghill in her introduction that "a crime (preferably by murder), and magic and the supernatural had to be somehow involved". Each tale does that and though the format is short story, readers will believe in the use of magic albeit whether to commit a crime, solve a crime, or both. The contributions run the gamut from historical to modern with varying sub-genres in each. Fans of fantasy who-done-it stories will want to read MURDER BY MAGIC as a virtual who's who of authors have contributed strong works in one of the best consistent compilations of the year. Harriet Klausner