A Century of Great Suspense Stories

By: Jeffery Deaver - editor

Narrated by: Various

An anthology of mystery and detective stories from the best writers of the 20th Century, as selected by Jeffery Deaver. Find here the best mystery/horror/detective stories of the century by the world’s most celebrated writers. The result is a triumph, featuring masterpieces of suspense by: Robert Bloch, Lawrence Block, Anthony Boucher, Frederic Brown, James M. Cain, Max Allan Collins, Jeffery Deaver, Stanley Ellin, Harlan Ellison, Erle Stanley Gardner, Ed Gorman, Patricia Highsmith, Reginald Hill, Tony Hillerman, Evan Hunter, Stephen King, John D. MacDonald, Ed McBain, Sharyn McCrumb, Ruth Rendell, Sara Paretsky, Georges Simenon, Mickey Spillane, Donald E. Westlake, Robert Barnard, Anna Katharine Green, Jeremiah Healy, John Lutz, Ross MacDonald, Michael Malone, Steve Martini, Margaret Millar, Marcia Muller, Bill Pronzini, Ellery Queen, Lisa Scottoline, Rex Stout, and Janwillem van de Wetering.

Not Mystery?

If you read the Mystery Magazines published under the names of Ellery Queen or Alfred Hitchcock few if any of these name will be a surprise. All excellent stories. The surprise was the quality of the narration. Two stories I already knew as good but skipped because the narrators were lousy. Over all, I was happy though.

Some good stories - but not the entire book

Before commenting on the book itself, it is important to note that this is not the entire unabridged book. This is not Audible.com's fault, but rather the fact that the original publisher actually only produced the first half of the book. It is rather odd, because the stories go exactly in order as the hardcover, but stop about halfway.

Having said that, let me move on to the stories themselves. Like most collections, there is some good, some not so great, and a lot in the middle. There are a couple of great gems in here however - Jeffrey Deaver's "The Weekender" was so good it was almost worth buying the book for!! Although I had read "Quitter's Inc." by Stephen King before, it is an absolutely fantastic short story. "Killing Bernstein" was also interesting.

I should also clarify that many (but not all) of these stories fall into the "detective" type of stories. I was expecting a little more quirkiness(similar to Stephen King's "non-supernatural" type of stories), but many were just short crime stories.

If you've never read "Quitter's Inc" or "The Weekender" or if you like detective stories, you'll probably enjoy this one.

Interesting collection

This compilation was made in 2002 apparently.
I’m pretty sure indexes were around then but this production is not only without any guide/list/index, it also fails to identify the narrators.
Each section is 44+ minutes long making it very difficult to locate the beginning of a story by a particular author.
That being griped about, it is a decent collection of creepy short stories. Stephen King is at his brilliant best. However one of the most interesting points about this anthology is that many of the authors are not main stream, so I learned about an entire group of writers for future reference. Most of the narration is good. Some narrators are excellent. Every story has value and this purchase is worth the credit or coin.

Terrible

Deaver can surely write them, but based on this compilation, he can't pick them. These stories were anything but suspenseful, and many of them were downright boring. As an example, one story was about ex cops hired to confiscate knock off merchandise from street vendors and the moral anguish this causes one of them; where's the suspense in that? Many of the stories abruptly end,leaving the reader to ask "what was the point of that?". I'd avoid this one.