Mean Rooms — Julie Smith

In the introduction to her first story collection, Edgar Award winner Smith (82 Desire) muses that crime happens on the mean streets but that criminals are forged indoors, in the mean rooms of the title. These stories are not tidy whodunits but offer a peek into the mean rooms where murderous impulses fester and finally explode. Several stories feature Smith's regular detectives, attorney Rebecca Schwartz, and police officer Skip Langdon. Others feature new characters. Smith's stories are funny, grim, satirical, and fascinating: a group of co-workers decide to kill their boss, a grief counselor is so full of his own psychobabble that he misunderstands a murder confession, a writer protects her lover's murderer because she understands the killer's motives, a psychic can't foretell her own murder. Smith's fans will love this book. Highly recommended for public libraries.--Karen Anderson, Superior Court Law Lib., Phoenix Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.