Ten Year Stretch is a collection of twenty short stories of the crime genre. They are written for the tenth anniversary of CrimeFest and royalties go to charity.
Bill Beverly -The Hired Man: A young man follows a girl from college to St Paul, Minnesota, where he has an unexpected encounter with a mobster.
Simon Brett - The Last Locked Room: A man solves the cold case mystery of his grandfather’s murder in an excellent locked room mystery.
Lee Child – Shorty and the Briefcase: an injured cop is instrumental in solving a case while on his back with a leg in traction.
Ann Cleeves – Moses and the Locked Tent Mystery: a safari employee solves the mysterious death of an Englishwoman killed inside a locked tent.
Jeffery Deaver – The Blind Date: a serial killer tale with a perfect twist.
Martin Edwards – Strangers in a Pub: a blackly funny tale of an ex-cop meeting a contact in a pub for some PI work.
Kate Ellis – Crime Scene: a crime-writer finds himself inside his own plot.
Peter Guttridge – Normal Rules Do Not Apply: a big-name crime writer is murdered at the Bristol CrimeFest so authors speculate about who, among them, is the murderer.
Sophie Hannah – Ask Tom St Clare: a woman is extremely dissatisfied with the PI she hires to find her missing boyfriend.
John Harvey – Blue and Sentimental: A saxophonist engages a PI to look for her lover, missed also by the lover’s husband and sons.
Mick Herron – How Many Cats Have You Killed?: Herron details his own career as a spy, and confesses (in advance) to a murder he’s about to commit.
Donna Moore – Daylight Robbery: Polly Fulton’s father-in-law comes to stay. His obnoxious son is constantly critical, but Polly and Col get on OK.
Caro Ramsay – The Snapperoody: The younger sister prides herself on her observation skills, she has a newly-passed-down Box Brownie (her Snapperoody) and she’s not stupid.
Ian Rankin – Inside the Box: At a colleague’s farewell, Rebus and Calder muse on another colleague, recently buried, and the jewellery heist he investigated years earlier. A little extra dose of Rebus.
James Sallis – Freezer Burn: His children are surprised when Daddy is thawed out: he claims he is (and always was) a freelance assassin. But then they have to drive him to meet a client.
Zoë Sharp – Caught on Camera: A freshly graduated detective in the New London Police Service takes on a gun man in a heroic act at a motorway toll booth, so why is her new boss less than impressed?
Yrsa Sigurðardóttir – Road Trip: Signy is determined to get her follow-up story on her exclusive interview with the murderer’s mother, even if it means driving an unsafe car on isolated icy roads.
Maj Sjöwall – Long Time No See: fifty-five-year-old Blomman has lived rough for years; she’s almost at her current abode when she encounters a friend from high school. Netta is amazed at how accepting Blomman is with her lot.
Michael Stanley – The Ring: Having encountered an angry Mrs Joubert at 15 Fairfield St, the recycler tries to check her bins when she’s not about to drive past in her shiny BMW. One week, he gets a nasty shock in her bin…
Andrew Taylor –The Five-Letter Word: On the first day of his leave, DI Richard Thornhill attends the house of a wealthy lady as a favour to his wife. But it’s not the nasty word written on the lawn with weedkiller that’s most disturbing.

This collection proves that all of these authors, many better known for longer works, are also talented short story writers. There’s the added bonus that readers unfamiliar with some of these names can get a taste without investing in a whole novel. Several are about crime writers (obviously a topic about which they have intimate knowledge); two even set their stories at the CrimeFest for which the book is published. Many are amusing, although the humour is often quite dark, and a few are truly chilling. Twenty excellent doses of crime.