Mystery Writers

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If you go to the bookstore and begin looking for a good mystery book, you find there are any number of excellent story tellers, each with their own central character. And each new book they write is wrapped around the adventures of this one character, a detective, an agent, a problem solver of some sort, and the crimes he encounters and solves. Each of these central characters by a different author, each one is distinct in his or her own way, with various methods and ways of approaching and solving their new case.
There are so many of them, so many authors and their central characters, that sometimes one might wonder what would happen if they should run into each other, meet, and work to solve their mysteries together.
As it turns out, most of these authors belong to the International Thriller Writers. That organization decided they should bring all these authors and characters together into one book. My own favorite writer, David Baldacci, edited this amazing piece of work, which saw the prolific Lee Child's character Jack Reacher come together with Joseph Finder's Nick Heller under the title "Good and Valuable Consideration." Steve Martini's Paul Madriani mixed it up with Linda Fairstein's Alexandra Cooper in "Surfing the Panther," and on and on for eleven mystery tales in The New York Times Bestseller "Faceoff."
Now, I'm so stuck on reading David Baldacci that I probably would not have read these other authors, or acquainted myself with their various characters, but Baldacci does such a deft job of editing that he leaves intact the warp and woof of the other writers' style of writing. They were great stories, and it was a new experience, to be sure, but all told, I think I'll stick with the literary world I'm used to, for now, the world of David Baldacci.