It is rare for stories to be specially commissioned for an audio book, but as Maxim Jakubowski, the editor of The Sounds of Crime tells us in a pre-thrill talk, he ‘begged’ the five writers he considered to be the best in their field to produce a new story for this collection; and ‘happily for me,’ he tells us, ‘they all agreed.’ Jakubowski’s introduction evokes those black-and-white days when Alfred Hitchcock shuffled on to millions of walnut-encased television sets to present us with half an hour of spine-tingling tension — very much as we have with each of the stories here.
‘Dolly’s Trash and Treasure’ is a harsh warning for potential hoarders of everything from mould-encrusted peanut-butter jars to stacks of old newspapers. Load your recycling bins now! Lawrence Block’s most famous creation is private investigator Matt Scudder, and the veteran crime grand master has us speculating and ultimately dreading what lurks beneath the piles of detritus in Dorothy Socrates’s apartment. The entire story is in dialogue, and full marks go to the narrator, Buffy Davis, for her vocal acrobatics.
In fact this collection contains every form of life alert. ‘Meet Me at the Crematorium’ would certainly deter me from experimenting with online dating. Janet from Eastbourne is sick and tired of Trevor, an embalmer. Although she doesn’t find the death business unattractive in itself, Trevor is too dull and predictable for her taste. Even their visits to the local S&M club are becoming wearily routine: if it’s Wednesday it must be nipple clamps.
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