I'm a little shocked to find myself giving this 3/5 stars. JA Konrath is one of my favorite authors because of his Jack Daniels Mystery Series, so of course I thought this would be a slam dunk 5/5 stars. But I just am not feeling that after finishing this collection.

I think my biggest gripe is that every story after the ones about Jack and crew (and excepting the ones about Donaldson) were all essentially the same...violent and a little gory. I mean, don't get me wrong, they were all about different things. And there was a "crime" category, a "horror" category, and a "funny stuff" category. But all throughout it was just violence with some gore. In the Jack Daniels books, it never bothers me, because it fits in with the storyline. But in a short story, the violence and the gore are the heart of the story, and after so many stories, it's just too much.

And, for the record, I did not see the humor in any one of the stories that was supposed to be funny. All I saw, even in the "funny stuff" stories was what I have already said, over and over. But the horror stories were pretty horrifying. ( )

Stories rated from very good to not so good, some of them down right gruesome ( )