Small Plates by Katherine Hall Page, a Mysterious Review.

Review: In the introduction to her short story collection Small Plates, Katherine Hall Page writes, "From time to time, I have published short stories myself, journeying away from my mystery series featuring inquisitive amateur sleuth Faith Sibley Fairchild, a wife, mother, and caterer who is prone to stumbling across dead bodies. I find the short stories more difficult to write than the novels — hard as they are. Yet I have written a number of short stories and this volume is a collection of some of them, as well as a few new ones."

Most of the stories in this collection do have Faith Fairchild as the lead, and they are probably among the better ones for they feature a familiar character (to those readers, who have read any of the novels in the series) and seem in many ways to be more original — or maybe less predictable — than the stand-alone stories included here. (This latter group could have used a new twist or something to punch them up and better to distinguish them from dozens of similarly themed stories written by so many others.) Even so, all the stories in this collection are entertaining and fans of short fiction, and especially fans of Hall's series, will definitely enjoy them.

The Body in the Sleigh
William Morrow (Hardcover), October 2009
ISBN-13: 9780061474255; ISBN-10: 0061474258

The Body in the Birches
William Morrow (Hardcover), May 2015
ISBN-13: 9780062310828; ISBN-10: 0062310828

Small Plates

A Short Story Collection by Katherine Hall Page