Reflections on Murder: Selected Short Stories of Nedra Tyre, is edited and introduced by Bill Kelly. His introduction is helpful and informative, setting the sixteen stories - written between 1955 and 1978 - in context, especially with regard to the author's years spent working in social services. Her understanding of the impulses that drive ordinary people to commit crime came, at least in part, from time she'd spent talking to such people and trying to help them.
I first came across the name of Nedra Tyre many years ago in the pages of that excellent magazine Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and I recall being greatly impressed by 'A Nice Place to Stay', which is included here. But until now I've only been able to find a handful of her stories. There is further good news, however, in that Stark House Press have reissued some of her novels and I hope to review Hall of Death on this blog before too long.
It's obvious from several of these stories, including the title story, that Nedra Tyre was an enthusiastic reader of detective fiction. She was quite skilled at plotting, but time and again in reading these stories, what lingers in the memory is the characterisation. She was working at much the same time as better-known writers such as Charlotte Armstrong (and, in Britain, Celia Fremlin) but she too deserves to be read and this collection is most welcome.
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