Sinister Gambits: Chess Stories of Murder and Mystery

Stan Chung teaches English at the College of New Caledonia in Prince
George, B.C.

This anthology of mystery stories uses chess as its unifying focus. The
editor lists a host of famous writers who played chess—Edgar Allan
Poe, Hermann Hesse, Lewis Carroll, Vladimir Nabokov—but they do not
appear in this volume. Readers will recognize the names Stephen Leacock,
Agatha Christie, and J.G. Ballard, but may not know the other
contributors. Despite this, many of the stories are entertaining and in
keeping with the book’s title. This diverting anthology will appeal
both to non-chess players and to chess aficionados looking for short
mystery fiction.