Matchup - Edited by Lee Child

I'm leaving the cover of Matchup a little larger this time so you can see the wealth of authors who contributed to this compilation. But if you look again, you'll see that they are paired - pairings that you wouldn't expect to see. For in Matchup, two well known authors have take their signature characters and co-written a short story featuring the two. Lee Child is the editor and he provides a small commentary before each story, giving some background on the authors as well as the collaboration.

I have read many of these authors and it was nice to see familiar characters again, but a few were new to me. Matchup  was a great way to get idea of who these characters were. Some of the pairings had me wondering how in the world two quite different leads would work together. Diana Gabaldon and Steve Berry? Sandra Brown and C.J. Box? Well, the answer is - really well. The stories are clever, fun to read and satisfying. I enjoy short story collections as you can pick them up and down, easily (and satisfyingly) finishing  a story at a short sitting.

I chose to listen to Matchup and I'm so glad I did. There are a number of narrators as well. I had listened to some of them before, but a few were new to me. This was also a great opportunity to discover some new audio  book readers.

It's really hard to pull out favourite stories, as I did truly enjoy them all. But if pressed I would say Lee Child and Kathy Reichs were a favourite. Tempe bossing Reacher around was great fun. And I also really liked Karin Slaughter and Michael Koryta. Koryta was new to me, but I am going to pick up one of his Joe Pritchard books after this introduction. Slaughter gives us a look at a young Jeffery Tolliver that was fun. I am a huge fan of both Peter James and Val McDermid. Having both Tony Hill and Roy Grace on the same case was wonderful.

I really enjoyed Matchup and hope we can see another collection such as this. Take a listen to an excerpt here. You can find out more about the readers here. Or if you prefer, read an excerpt of Matchup.