LOVE KILLS

Not only does it kill, but it makes you feel really creepy first—whether your pleasure is loving homicide (Sandra Scoppettone, Richard T. Chizmar), romantic betrayal (John Lutz, Jerry Sykes, Dorothy B. Hughes, editor Gorman), sour marriages (Bill Pronzini, Peter Crowther, Ron Goulart, Joe Hensley, Bill Crider), hints of the supernatural (Edward Bryant, Larry Segriff, Barbara Collins, Greg Cox), sexual taboos (Morris Hershman, Marthayn Pelegrimas, Richard Deming, Jonathan Craig), stalkers and other obsessives (Nancy Pickard, Marcia Muller, Brian Lawrence, Maxim Jakubowski, Lawrence Block, Ruth Rendell), vengeance served cold (James Reasoner, Max Allan Collins), or just plain bad relationships (Evan Hunter, Jim Combs, Donald Westlake). The stories—united only by their bleak take on love and their use of violence to release the often unbearable tension—range from 1953 through 1996; but all of them are spiritual descendants of the '50s pulps. Guaranteed to make you think twice about the person next to you at the bar—or on the other side of the connubial bed.