From the blurb: "Fresh Blood 2 brings in a second wave of `crime writing with attitude' from some of the brightest talents of the '90s". Well, the attitude is mostly black, but seasoned with gallows humour; no traditional detective fiction here, no bodies in the library, no amateur sleuths using the little grey cells, no gathering of suspects at the end so that the murderer can be revealed. Instead we get only faint shadings between the goodies and the baddies, a moral climate bizarre, to say the least, and few, if any, conventional solutions with the hero triumphant and the villain consigned to hell and damnation. Writers such as Christopher Brookmyre, John Tilsley, Charles Higson and the editors themselves provide stories as close to the cutting edge as a butcher's knife. And the fairer sex is represented too, in offerings from Christine Green, Carol Anne Davis and Mary Scott. Tough, abrasive, and distinctly Jim Thompsonish, these stories won't put you to sleep, but they may give you an adrenalin rush to make your hair stand on end.