This is a short story collection that might be best described as within the off-kilter section of the hard-boiled detective genre. There's humour, an Arsenic and Old Lace reference (which I suppose would have been pretty current when it was written), and a lot of people trying to get away with murder. Plus one guy who tries to convince another that he killed his wife while simultaneously trying to get away with murder.
I didn't love all the stories equally, but they were all entertaining. Probably my least favourite was The Cat from Siam. Or maybe Listen to the Mockingbird, since I keep forgetting what it was about (I keep thinking about it as the last story and not by its title). I'm not sure what my favourite was... Maybe Red-Hot and Hunted, the one that starts out like a play about a guy who tries to convince another that he just murdered his wife and the other guy thinks he's just trying to get the part of a guy who killed his wife in a Bluebeard play he's putting on...
Yeah, a lot of the stories are like that. They start off straight-forward and then Brown tweaks them and gives them a spin (generally a wobbly-spin). If that sounds like your cup of tea, and you see this collection available, you might want to pick it up.
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