Double Trouble

Oates (Fox) showcases her inventive approach to the serial killer trope in the first of three planned volumes collecting crime fiction she wrote under the pseudonym Rosamond Smith. It opens with the pulpy 1999 novel Starr Bright Will Be with You Soon, in which exotic dancer Sharon Donner, who performs under the name Starr Bright, murders men across the American Southwest in an effort to rid Earth of “adulterers and fornicators.” Along the way, she seeks out her fraternal twin, Lily Merrick, whom she’d tormented when the two were children. Soul/Mate, originally published in 1989, centers on psychopath Colin Asch, who becomes obsessed with widow Dorothea Deverell after meeting her at a Massachusetts art museum. In a predictable development, Colin starts killing anyone who stands in the way of their romance. Also collected here are the late 1970s short stories “The Murderess,” about an unlikely friendship between two women, and “An Unsolved Crime,” which follows a man reflecting on the death of his stepfather. Oates’s plotting sometimes veers into melodrama, but her prose is reliably sharp (a woman’s face is “repulsive: not because it was ugly but because it had obviously been beautiful at one time and was now ravaged”). Fans of the author and of literary crime fiction will be pleased. (Feb.)