title: Murder in the Rough: Original Tales of Bad Shots, Terrible Lies, and Other Deadly Handicaps from Today's Great Writers
author:  Otto Penzler 
description: Too often authors of crime stories rely on bodies buried in bunkers (there's not enough sand) or on wily caddies exposing the pomposities of country-club fat cats (way too easy). Penzler, who has made a cottage industry out of sports-themed mystery anthologies, doesn't totally avoid these hazards, but the original stories he has commissioned for this volume have one big thing going for them: the writers are all top drawer, from Ian Rankin and Ken Bruen, on the hard-boiled side, to Jonathan Gash and William G. Tapply, on the more relaxed, over-easy side. But these stories all have an edge, often using our stereotypical images of golf to help create it. Bruen does it best, in a story that begins, "I hate fuckin' golf," and then proceeds to explain why. Lawrence Block isn't far behind, in "Welcome to the Real World," in which a retired executive, happy to hit balls at Chelsea Piers Driving Range in Manhattan, is forced onto a real course. For golf and crime fans, Penzler's exhaustive bibliography of golf mysteries is almost as much of a treat as the stories. <i>Bill Ott</i><br /><i>Copyright  American Library Association. All rights reserved</i>
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