The Best British Mysteries 2005 (Paperback)

If that isn't enough to tempt you, it also contains a story by Val McDermid, author of Wire in the Blood, and another by Colin Dexter, creator of Inspector Morse. Not to mention stories by Lindsey Davis, creator of Marcus Didius Falco, and by Mark Billingham, author of Lifeless and The Burning Girl. Add to that a new Inspector Ghote story by H.R.F. Keating, a new Harpur and Iles story by Bill James, and a new Auguste Didier mystery by Amy Myers.

And - except for Val McDermid's chilling 'The Consolation Blonde' - those aren't even the best stories in the collection. Granted, 'Rumpole and the Scales of Justice' is a worthy addition (conclusion?) to the canon, in which Horace again gets to use his knowledge of Shakespeare, as well as providing an excellent summation of the true role of defence lawyers. Reginald Hill's 'The Game of Dog' shows Peter Pascoe wrestling with the concept of reasonable doubt, and Ian Rankin's 'Tell Me Who To Kill' captures the bleakness of Rebus's job and world in a very few words. But disappointingly, Falco only appears briefly in Lindsey Davis's amusing ghost story 'Something Spooky on Geophys', Inspector Ghote struggles to defeat tax fraud in 'Majumdar Uncle', and Inspector Morse is only mentioned in passing in Colin Dexter's rather slight piece 'The Double Crossing'.

On the other hand, noted horror writer Christopher Fowler's 'American Waitress' is a disturbing study of stalking, obsession and despair: it's even scarier than McDermid's story, which is no mean feat. Rosemary Rowe's 'Caveat Emptor' is an intriguing tale of law and justice in the Roman Empire. Francis King's gay yuppie nightmare 'The Sitting Tenant' manages to be both funny and eerie simultaneously. Muriel Gray's 'School Gate Mums' offers an appealing solution to the problem of bullying in schools. Mat Coward's 'Room to Move' is worthy of Ray Bradbury. And Robert Barnard's 'The Cairo Road', a tale of three bandits waiting to ambush "economic migrants or bogus asylum seekers" on the road from Bethlehem to Egypt is nothing short of brilliant.

There are also some unnerving character sketches, and satires on the modern business of detective fiction. Of actual mysteries, however, there are very few: the only puzzle that would give Sherlock Holmes or Poirot pause would be the question of why a few of these stories were included at all. The great detectives might also wonder why a collection of stories first published in 2003, and reprinted in 2004, is called The Best British Mysteries 2005.

Admittedly, that's nit-picking, but while there is undeniably some first-rate crime fiction between these covers (and a very small number of duds), the book is also an indicator of just how little short fiction is still published in the genre even if you stretch its boundaries to breaking point. Editor Maxim Jakubowski is literary director of the Crime Scene Festival, crime fiction reviewer for the Guardian, and opened the world's largest crime bookstore, Murder One - so if he's picked these as the best of the bunch, I'll take his word for it. But these twenty-eight stories are taken from only seven anthologies, two magazines (and it's good to see that the Strand Magazine, the first publisher of Sherlock Holmes, still publishes some crime fiction), BBC Radio 4, a self-published chapbook, and the catalogue of the Harrogate Mystery Festival.

The most telling piece in the collection, then, may be Antony Mann's 'Esther Gordon Framlingham', in which a wannabe mystery writer who wants to write one-off detective novels finds the genre so crammed with series about sleuthing Neanderthals and nineteenth century Peruvian goatherds that he's forced to wait until another author dies so he can take over ghosting a series about a medieval abbot. While this collection caters to the fans of several long-running series, it also provides a showcase for newer writers - some of whom are writing the best British crime fiction since Holmes took his last bow.