I really wanted to like this one, it would have been a great way to discover new authors to me. However, I think I really don't like stories. I like longer format writing. Just not for me.

This book is perfect for crime lovers. Featuring "villains" from all over, probably many that you have not heard of before. This is a unique book because it educates you in a. fun and sinister way on what crimes have taken place across the world.

This is a spectacular and very diverse collection of mystery/crime stories. There's honestly something for every reader:
- Familiar names
- New voices
- Detectives
- Antiheroes
- Fantasy
- Grit
- Emotional stories
- Longer pieces
This is a really well-curated collection, so whatever your taste, you will find something here.

What a unique collection of stories! Featuring some great authors including one of my personal favorites - SA Cosby - this collection features some really interesting crime stories that left me wanting more! A great book to read straight through and enjoy as a whole or, if short on time, can read one story a week and still really enjoy each story as a standalone crime story. Inventive and interesting, would love to see more collections like this!

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion!

I was not familiar with many of these authors, which is exactly what I love about collections such as this. I liked how there's a focus on the detective angle behind the crimes. The stories have a nice mix of characters. While I enjoyed certain stories a bit more, this was a nice collection overall. I will likely check out some books by many of these authors in the future.

The thematic hook of The Perfect Crime, a new 22-story anthology from the Crime Writers’ Association, both excited and ultimately disappointed me. As editors Maxim Jakubowski and Vaseem Khan explain in their introduction, this collection strives to give voice to authors who bring their own cultural and ethnic perspectives to their mystery and suspense fiction. Jakubowski notes the genre history of white men who have provided readers with ethnic protagonists, such as John Ball’s African-American detective Virgil Tibbs and H.R.F. Keating’s Bombay-based Inspector Ghote. Since the days of Edgar Allen Poe, crime fiction has overwhelmingly offered stories about white people and white culture, so a collection that encourages men and women of varied racial and ethnic identities to tell their own tales is cause for celebration.

Some authors featured here certainly deliver, while others disappoint. As with any multiple-writer anthology, a reader will likely find some entries stronger than others. With The Perfect Crime, however, I found myself wading through too many generic stories, tales that might be set in the Australian outback or feature characters named Kaeto and Tej but whose predictable plotlines could be transplanted anywhere with a Caucasian cast and suffer no culture shock. I tended to get ahead of many of these unsatisfying stories because their authors play it safe and deliver familiar tropes, whether it’s an unconvincing con-versus-con story or a lover’s triangle where one of the sides takes a telegraphed revenge on the other two.

When an author rises to the challenge to break from genre tradition and explore their own voice and cultural identity, the effect is memorable and sometimes visceral. Two excellent entries confront the subject of racial hatred and the violence it provokes head on. In John Vercher’s “Either Way I Lose,” a light-skinned African-American man in 1919 Omaha gets caught up in politics and prejudice and must decide how far he will go to provoke – or stop – murder within his community. With “The Yellow Line” and its menacing first sentence “He followed her home again,” Ausma Zehanat Khan relates the story of Haniya, a young Muslim woman who becomes the target of a privileged banker who takes sadistic pleasure in stalking his quarry. Both stories are carefully crafted, understated in their prose, and unflinching as they build to their climaxes; each offers a sharp portrait of minority individuals trying to survive within a culture dismissive and often openly hostile to them.

Other writers make great use of the mindset and landscape of their characters. For me, standouts include “For Marg” by the prolific J.P. Pomare, a somber story conjuring up the wet, cold isolation of the New Zealand hills as a widowed farmer tries to stop his sheep from disappearing. Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s “The Land of Milk and Honey” pays homage to Spanish domestic drama by placing tentative young lovers in conflict with the girl’s repressive patriarch of a father. With “Buttons”, Imran Mahmood explores the psychology of a sociopath in a focused, highly effective sketch of a London man prowling for a victim.

Sheena Kamal’s “Sundown” adroitly tackles the harsh topics of sex trafficking and racial violence in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, the title referring to towns where dark-skinned people must leave by sunset or face the consequences. “Paradise Lost” by Abir Mukherjee strikes a welcome lighter tone as an expatriate Scot criminal, stuck hiding out on a posh island retreat for the ultra-wealthy, schemes to return to the UK. American writer Walter Mosley rounds out the collection with “Bring Me Your Pain,” the story of Acme Green, a gentle man trying to secure a patent for his very unique machine.

As for the other 14 stories featured in The Perfect Crime, a few were enjoyable while others seemed to waste their thematic promise by providing rote plotlines and unremarkable characters. Nelson George’s entry “The Ten Lessons of Big Matt Silver” is notable for its Brooklyn hip-hop industry setting and its screenplay format but loses its impact as it tells far more than it shows, keeping the reader at a distance. (The story becomes a summary treatment rather than a script: “As Matt masterminds the cranberry campaign and worries about the FBI investigation, his relationship with Ruby deteriorates.”)

I wish other writers had shown George’s interest in style and story experimentation. Instead, too many selections cover very familiar ground, even with a location or a character that nods to the diversity the editors are trying to encourage. I am also a bit bewildered about the anthology’s choice of title – the crimes collected here are perfect, imperfect, and in two instances not really crimes at all. Still, I appreciate the editors’ efforts to present and celebrate modern crime fiction from authors around the world. Thanks to The Perfect Crime, I know which authors’ voices I plan to seek out… and which ones I may want to skip for now.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the advanced copy of the book.

This anthology has engaging thrillers and was excellent to read

This is an excellent collection of tense thriller medium paced crime fiction. This anthology was able to introduce me to a number of new authors to fill my bookshelf with. I received this book as an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. All of these opinions are my own. #ThePerfectCrime #NetGalley

Such a great idea for a book! Loved each author’s take on a perfect crime. I’m buying a physical copy of this book to have in my home. Thank you for a great ARC!

I'm usually not a fan of story compilations, but this one sounded super interesting - a collection of short crime stories set around the world with diverse characters.

As is my norm, I did have some wandering issues - it's hard to stay out when the stories are short - but that was a benefit too. Short stories are great when you're standing in line or only have a short time to read

There were a lot of different writing and story styles, some I didn't care for but many were really good. Some clued you into the mystery of the crime right away, some saved it for the very last page. All in all, compilations still aren't my favorite but this was an interesting one.

I love learning about the landscapes and the cultures of the world, and I've found that one of the best ways to do so is through the crime fiction that I choose to read. An excellent source to feed this addiction of mine has long been the extraordinary short story anthology series published by Akashic, and when I learned that this book was being published, I knew I had to read it. After all, it contained stories written by several of my favorite authors.

Consequently, I could enjoy stories by authors I knew (S.A. Cosby, Sulari Gentill, Rachel Howzell Hall, Ausma Zehanat Khan, Vaseem Khan, Walter Mosley, Abir Mukherjee, David Heska Wanbli Weiden) while finding new-to-me authors like Silvia Moreno-Garcia and John Vercher, more of whose work I want to read.

The Perfect Crime takes readers all around the globe and introduces them to many cultures. There's not a bad apple in this anthology barrel, but I have to give special shout-outs to Rachel Howzell Hall's "Clout Chaser" and Ausma Zehanat Khan's "The Yellow Line." The tastiest of them all? John Vercher's "Either Way I Lose" set in 1919 Omaha, Nebraska. This story simply blew me away with its truth, power, and visceral, deeply emotional, knockout punch. Absolutely one of the best things I've read all year.

If you're an armchair traveling sleuth, you definitely need to get your hands on a copy of The Perfect Crime. I hope readers will be treated to a second volume in the future.

A really great collection that focuses on more than murder and comes at the detective story from all different sides.

Thanks to NetGalley for a free ARC.

Great collection by some pretty cool authors. Some of these authors I will be following for sure.

I received an ARC copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.

This is a great collection of stories by authors, some of which I have been familiar and others which were new to me but I will be following going forward. As with all collections of short stories some are better than others but overall the whole collection was a good read.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this in exchange for my review.

I really enjoyed this. The stories provided good detail and evidence. I feel like I learned a lot And have a better understanding of true crime, if that makes sense. Highly recommend.

What a perfect collection of short stories. Most are twisted. Others funny. All written by brilliant authors who are not yet household names. I wanted to read it because it has a story by Silvia Moreno Garcia, whom I’ve followed for years and consider one of the best writers alive today. Her entry here, “The Land of Milk and Honey” did not disappoint. I also enjoyed the stories by other authors I already knew, like Rachel Howzell Hall, Oyinkan Braithwaite or the very well known Walter Mosley. I also got to discover writers that I had never read before. “Either Way I Lose,” by John Vercher is specially brilliant, and brutal. The problem with collections is that you get a mixed bag. This is not the case here, every single story is fantastic. I was also worried that this would be a woke “everybody is racist” volume, but the stories are not trying to prove a point, they are just great tales from really talented writers that may have not been given a chance before. I will be adding their novels to my reading material in the future.
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, #NetGalley/#Harper 360, HarperCollins!

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of The Perfect Crime.

I love mysteries and though I'm wary of short story anthologies (they're often a mixed bag) I was pleasantly surprised by the collection of stories in The Perfect Crime.

Great diversity of characters, interesting plots, some of them are darkly comedic or just plain dark; others are wickedly vengeful and deliver a comeuppance readers would appreciate.

I'd highly recommend this to any mystery and/or crime thriller lover!

While I can't say that this was my favorite mystery anthology - the stories were, on the whole, very dark and I tend to prefer fair play mysteries - I applaud the intent and the fact of such a diverse group of authors being gathered together. Much as I adore the Golden Age of Mystery, we are well beyond that in terms of who is able to be published in the genre, and this brings that fact into the light - and hopefully will keep it there.

A very enjoyable collection of crime stories. A crime anthology is fairly rare, so this was a nice surprise and a solid set of stories. Recommended for anthology and crime fans.

Thanks very much for the free ARC for review!!