Collection of six (I think) short stories. All are excellent. I hope Jack Lee gets his own book someday. He's a great character. ( )

This is an excellent collection of short stories written by S. J. Rozan. Although she is most famous for her Lydia Chin / Bill Smith series, these are independent, stand alone stories. Several of them received or were nominated for awards. Many of them are noir type stories; two were written for the Akashic Books Noir series. One was commissioned by Public Radio, but then rejected as too noir. All have been previously published, but as Rozan notes, short stories tend to get lost as the original anthology or magazine issue becomes old; she rejoices in the ability of the new electronic media to allow her to create her own anthology. Each story is accompanied by a note from Rozan telling how it came to be written, and what she was attempting to achieve. In one case, for example, she was trying to write dialogue without using the word "said," and succeeded beautifully. ( )