Sleep No More

September 18, 2017
The selections in this solid second posthumous collection from MWA Grand Master James (after 2016’s The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories) explore variations of the theme of looking back on past violent incidents. In “The Yo-Yo,” a yo-yo that a septuagenarian played with as a child sparks memories of a murder that occurred while he was in prep school; the tale ends with an ironic twist. In “The Murder of Santa Claus,” the recollections of writer Charles Mickledore—the creator of an aristocratic sleuth dismissed by critics as “a pallid copy of Peter Wimsey”—about a long-ago murder case alternate with those of elderly Det. Insp. John Pottinger. James pokes fun at herself when Mickledore remarks, “I’m no H.R.F. Keating, no Dick Francis, not even a P.D. James.” The standout is “The Victim,” in which the cuckolded first husband of Princess Ilsa Mancelli, who was a film and TV star before marrying into royalty, plots revenge. James (1920–2014) was just as gifted an author of short stories as she was a novelist. Agent: Carol Heaton, Greene & Heaton Ltd. (U.K.).