Review - Exit Wounds (edited by Paul B Kane and Marie O'Regan)

Cover design by Julia Lloyd

Exit Wounds
Edited by Paul B Kane and Marie O'Regan
Titan Books, 21 May 2019
PB, 381pp

I'm grateful to Titan for a free advance copy of Exit Wounds

I love a good themed anthology, I find an anthology does several things for me, as a reader. First, if well chosen (and the authors in this one are among the best) their perspectives (what's the right word for a gang of authors? A plot?) can shed more light – or dark – on a subject than any single writer could.

Here, that theme is the “exit” from a crime – or a criminal situation. That exit might be a death, or an escape, or more loosely the winding down of the events. It’s perceptive, I think, to focus on this aspect when a great deal of crime writing deals with the before – the build-up – and / or the after – the investigation. Here attention is mainly on the cusp after one, and before the other. Although in some of these stories (such as Joe R Lansdale' Booty and the Beast) the exit may have been long ago.

Another valuable service anthologies serve is giving authors space to tackle things a bit differently, to visit aspects of their fiction that might not be enough for a full-blown novel but, nevertheless, fill in details or illustrate ideas that are useful in understanding the whole. So for example here in Steph Broadribb's Fool You Twice we see an early adventure of her hero Lori Anderson.  I am and always have been a member of #TeamLori, a fan of Broadribb’s indefatigable bounty hunter, former exotic dancer, and mother so it was a delight to read this, the earliest story about her, showing how she made a start on her own – and that she was, form the very beginning, capable, brave, determined and on the side of the angels. And in John Connolly's splendidly named On the Anatomization of an Unknown Man (1637) by Frans Mier we see a dark world that might, or might not, fit with his Fractured Atlas universe: having just read Connolly’s A Book of Bones I read out that way though there is no explicit connection: but the shadowy demi-monde of artists, surgeons and anatomists hinted at here could be taking place behind that story. In particular the creeping doubt over just what this story is and how it related to the painting being described is delightfully creepy.

The final joy of an anthology like this is that you’re certain to pick up accessible writing both by authors you know and those you don't - whether the latter are ones you have wanted to try but haven’t got round to, and by those you didn't know, but can now explore in future. Overall, a triple win, I’d say.

So here are nineteen stories, most of them published here for the first time, and all excellent.

The Bully by Jeffery Deaver is a neat little story, reflecting Deaver’s encyclopaedic knowledge of forensics, in which you understand everything that’s happening – until you don’t. Dead Weight by Fiona Cummins is a bleak tale in which Lula suffers repeated psychological abuse and body-shaming from her controlling mother. There are some stomach churning moments of realisation here. Were there hints about the mother’s motivations? I wasn’t sure but this really left an impression.

I really enjoyed Like a Glass Jaw by Mark Billingham. Dealing, I think, with how women and men cope differently with their lives, we meet a man of the old school (he notes that there were mainly women at his gym session, so no pressure on him), perhaps a bit of a villain, though past his prime. A spiral of events leads him somewhere he didn’t intend to be, -but was the whole thing a result of the male outlook adding two and two to make five? I also loved Sarah Hilary's The Pitcher which reminded me of Roald Dahl or Joan Aiken (Marmalade Wine) at their very best, a deliciously wicked little tale with a decided “aha!” moment - a very chilling moment.

I wondered if stretching things to call Discipling by Martin Waites a crime story, pure and simple, though there is an (implied) exit, as this is I think a story with no victim. Or at least no unwilling victim. Nevertheless I wouldn't have had it left out.

The Consumers by Dennis LeHane is more conventionally crime-y, a bitter little story, featuring an abused wife and a hitman. For a short story it packs in a great deal, including reflections on personal responsibility, culpability and the sources of wealth. The exit sought here looks like an easy way out, but life has a habit of being complicated. Another of my favourites in this anthology.

The next two in the anthology, Voices Through the Wall by Alex Gray and Lee Child's Wet With Rain are both definitely aftermath stories. In Voices, the offender is wholly absent - leaving an echo of dis-ease - and we're simply left to wonder as we piece together a sad chain of events. In Wet With Rain,  almost a mini thriller, we follow a pair of Americans who are clearly up to something dodgy in Northern Ireland, with their implausible story about buying up the birthplace of a noted writer - but what do they really want? I had sort of guessed the "what" from a couple of clues in the text - but the "what next" completely blindsided me.

I will now make a terrible confusion. Until reading this anthology I hadn't ever read any Val McDermid. (I know!) Now I know what I'm missing. Happy Holidays features McDermid's criminal profiler Dr Tony Hill and DCI Carol Jordan, investigating a series of murders that seem themed around traditional holidays. When Santa disappears, things seem to have become serious. But what is really behind the chain of grisly killings?

Christopher Fowler's Lebensraum, in contrast, reads less as a specifically crime adventure - though there is a background of villainy in it - than as an allegory. It's a story of an old woman whose house is progressively taken over by strangers - loud strangers how strut around in uniforms and speak of their "cause". Illustrating the theme of "Exit Wounds" almost perfectly, the narrator almost seems to be fading from her own life. Whether at the end she's a symbol of endurance or a victim is unclear. A powerful and disturbing story.

Mark Billingham's Dancing Towards the Blade is another story that ends on a note of ambiguity. Billingham's story sees cultures collide as Vincent - a young man of colour -  encounters racist bullies on his run down estate. Cutting between the bleakness of that confrontation and the vibrant coming of age ceremony for, I think, his father, Dancing Towards the Blade, like Lebensraum confronts the realities of newly confident racism and hatred.

Kittens by Dean Koontz is perhaps another story of hatred but on a more domestic scale. It is both grim and sad - read it at your peril! Featuring a bullying and ignorant father who warps religion to terrorise his daughter, it is strong stuff as is AK Benedict's Take my Hand. Benedict is another writer I look out for. I wish there was more by her I could read so I was delighted to see this half-crime, half-spooky story about a nasty museum exhibit and the plans of some nasty schoolchildren to make mischief with it. Definitely one of my favourites. Dressed to Kill byJames Oswald has aspects on common with Take My Hand (I'll say no more - spoilers!) as a series of deaths come to light which bear striking similarities. The only problem is, they are murder/ suicides and they take place decades apart....

There's a twist of dark humour to the final three stories in this volume. Joe R Lansdale's Booty and the Beast is almost a comic caper, as three villains jostle for the legacy of a lone-gone crime. (Exits, again) They seem to be three particularly vile people and the way things turn out - another exit - is curiously satisfying. In Paul Finch's The New Lad – almost novella length - we see what Greater Manchester Police do with the new boy in the team. They put him on duty guarding a lonely crime scene late at night on his own, ion course. Deploying the full register of spooky scares, twists and foreshadowing, this story is a miniature masterpiece in tension. Finally, in Louise Jensen's The Recipe, the husband has already exited, leaving his middle-aged wife to pick up the pieces of her life. She seems to be managing very well, but will the arrival of her sister bring unwelcome memories?

These are entertaining, varied stories, almost all compulsively readable. Do give them a try.

For more information about the book, see the publisher's website here. To buy Exit Wounds, why not make a trip to your local crime scene - sorry, bookshop - or buy online from Hive Books which supports some local shops. Or you can get it from Blackwell's, Waterstones or Amazon.