3.75 stars. Not a bad read, and it was quick, too: I read it at lunch over a two-day period! As with any anthology, the quality of the short stories presented varied.

"Paydown" by Nick Stephenson (5 stars): Prequel to Stephenson's Leopold Blake series featuring the wealthy heir to a financial empire who is a brilliant detective in his own right, and Mary Jordan, a New York City detective who utilizes Blake’s skills in an advisory capacity, and Blake's bodyguard Jerome, who extricates him from dangerous situations. Here, the team investigates the murder of a Wall Street banker during the 2007 financial crisis. My favorite of the entire anthology, this one really piqued my interest, and I’ll be looking for the other four books in this series.

"Loose Ends" by David VanDyke (3.5 stars): A novelette featuring California "Cal" Corwin, a female PI based in San Francisco. Cal is an ex-cop dealing with some heavy physical and emotional trauma resulting from being caught in a bomb blast. In this story, she is investigating a missing daughter of a pharmaceutical company executive. The story was entertaining.

"Mr. Mockingbird Drive" by Robert Swartwood (4 stars): A short story about two street thugs targeting a mark withdrawing money from an ATM machine. They actually want to get inside the man's home and loot it, but find a clever twist at the end.

"Ladies' Weekend" by Ryan King (3 stars): The female members of a Southern family make their annual weekend trip to a Gulf Shores beach resort. I was expecting a bonding story, especially when the author reveals that one of the women is dying of cancer and likely on her last such weekend. Of course, to fit into this anthology, there's something far more sinister happening. The story does a great job of plot development.

"Veritas: Concubine" by R. S. Guthrie (4 stars): Veritas is a former Army ranger who made it his mission to go after sexual predators who had evaded legal punishment for their crimes. This one was extremely graphic, with an abrupt ending. The author is planning a series of books detailing Veritas' “activities”, and this story definitely establishes the main characters and the premise.

"Divide and Conquer" by Kay Hadashi (4.5 stars): A cat-and-mouse story about a woman babysitting her two nieces who finds herself the victim of a home invasion by three ex-cons. She faces insurmountable odds, but proves adept with both words and fists, evening the odds against the invaders. Readers are privy to the babysitter’s thoughts as she figures her moves, too, which makes this quite fast paced.

"Recidivist" by Alan McDermott (3 stars): A wealthy man offers juvenile offenders a second chance for those who want it and something rather different for those who don't. Old-fashioned twist at the end.

"Return of the Bride" by Michael Maxwell (3 stars): An extremely short story about a man going to the Middle East to rescue his dead brother's wife, who has been kidnapped by extremists. This should have been much longer to flesh out the emotions tied up here. ( )

I enjoy a good short story and I also enjoy a good anthology. This is a collection of stories that are fair and not well edited in the way the anthology is assembled. The book is touted as a collection of thrillers. I didn't feel like I got that from this book. There was an uneven quality to the stories whereby you had one full of action and the next going nowhere.

Nick Stephenson is the editor of this anthology as well as a contributing author. He chose to put his own work first and it was also the longest piece. In reading an assembled work of this kind, it is unusual that the author chose to showcase his own material first. I found that off putting.

Structurally, it works better when assembling a collection to put the longest piece in the middle. This showcases that piece. Shorter pieces are built on either end. Almost like Tetris, stories need to fit together to make sense. In addition, there were two stories by D.D. VanDyke with the same character of Cal Corwin. The second story should have actually been put first as it better introduced the character and her background. Instead, the first story was written later and made assumptions about the readers knowledge of the character that could have been addressed by simply changing story order.

As for the stories themselves...there were some better than others. There were a few that rambled on with no crispness. There were others that stood the test of what a short story should be. There was one that defied all logic and made for quite a conversation piece. Whether or not it fit the genre, I'm not sure.

Short stories are the hardest ones to write. Characters have to be developed quickly and have enough fullness to keep the reader interested in what will happen to them. The story itself has to unfold quickly because resolution is going to come fast. The use of words has to be economical and carefully selected because every word counts - literally and figuratively - toward the end result. I'm not convinced that this collection hit all these necessary points in order for me to feel good about recommending the collection.

My advice to readers is check the contents and see if there are particular writers you really love to read and base your purchase of the book on your willingness to pay for the stories of a particular author. ( )