Eighteen stories, 223 pages, with a cover showing a sultry redhead sitting on a laptop keyboard, this collection of short, dark mysteries proves that technology works for both crime and detection. I enjoyed every story in the book, kudos to the editors in their selection. The technology varied, with most stories using computers but some going low-tech, old-tech and future-tech.

Eva Batonne’s story, “Mixo-Matic” combined a blender, Uzi’s, a group of Rastafarians and 24 bottles of anti-depressants. “Under the Gun,” by Bill Crider, used a .38 revolver and a suspect who is criminally clean. It’s a wire on an undercover operative who goes looking for the stolen motorcycles of a judge and the mayor in Rick McMahan’s “All the World’s a Stage.” The author’s background as a federal agent made the story ring true.

Two stories involved medical technology. In “Batty,” a reclusive genius, self-described as a little bi-polar, a little autistic, who has  “too much knowledge with too little common sense” searches for rabies-loaded bat spit. H. Robert Perry’s story moves with manic energy. An antidote for a strange poison comes into play in  “Surprise Package” by J. Michael Blue.

Several authors, including Bill Crider with Sheriff Rhodes, used characters seen in their other stories. Tim Wohlforth used the detective from his new novel “No Time To Mourn” to address our fear of identity theft in “Cookie Monster.” Stacy McReady, the sleuth in “Comeuppance,” goes out on a case before she has her license. She’ll soon star in Linda Posey’s first novel, “Don’t Bet Against Murder.” Jeffrey Marks penned another US Grant mystery, “Under Developed” where a ghost captured in a photo points out his killer.

Modern photography is in play as a woman with fading vision uses the memory card of a digital camera to prove a murder in “Through a Lense, Darkly” by Flora Davis. The author has one of several lines I chose as favorites in her opening, “We see what we expect to see–I’m living proof of that.“ Detective Alice Gains complained of  “technology that changed as soon as she learned it,” in Stephen D. Rogers’ “Reboot.” Leann Sweeney nailed it with the line: “All of us are naked to the world, thanks to computers,” in her story “Suspicion.” And Libby Fischer Hellmann wondered “what a trophy wife does when her metal tarnishes,” in “A Winter’s Tale.” 

On the subject of naked, a small town sheriff faces a man whose only crime is visiting sex chat rooms in “The Naked Man on the Roof” by Earl Staggs. It’s a more serious crime as a woman uses the Internet to find her real mother for a deadly reunion in “Mother’s Day Surprise” by Kris Neri. Nick Andreychuk hit the right key in his story “Suicide Notes” when a hitwoman is outwitted by a computer-savvy target. 

Does life end at 26? When you’re the latest computer whiz and your company is going down the tubes, suicide is an option according to Arla Gregory in “Another Dot-Gone.” Technology hasn’t removed sexual harassment from the workplace, only now it’s done via computer in Vera-Jane Goodin’s “Almost Deleted...” Harassment isn’t enough for a man who uses his time machine to kill all of his ex-wife’s future husbands in “Till Death Do Us Part.” The message is clear–don’t mess with author Michael Bracken! 

This anthology was published in 2005 by Zumaya Publications.