An apparently rare collection of science fiction and light fantasy stories with a crime/noir twist from Donald Westlake, creator of Parker and Dortmunder, that shows a lot of promise in a genre somewhat beyond his comfort zone.Whilst the title "Tomorrow's Crimes" brings to mind Blade Runner and other sci-fi noir, the subtitle "Anarchaos and Other Stories of Fantastic Suspense" really tells the tale of what's contained within these pages. Anarchaos is a sci-fi noirvella about a colony planet permanently sunbaked on one side due to the planet not rotating, a planet ripe for noir storytelling due to the lack of laws enforced. What follows offers some staples from the western and noir genre, a lone man set on revenge in a wasteland environment that is peopled by denizens as inhospitable as the terrain. It's at once interesting to witness such a barbaric world and a wholly absurd situation. Taking up the bulk of the page count it could have done with some more work to feel plausible and perhaps some fleshing out to novel length.The first half is also a mixed bag of stories, the highlight possibly being the tale of Nackles, an anti-Santa who comes up out of the ground to abduct the children on Santa's naughty list! Yes, a truly disturbing idea for a story that is also quite good fun. Giving it a run for its money is The Risk Profession which I had read previously in a different collection, a fascinating little story of an insurance claims investigator sent to a mining planet which shares some of the same frontier noir tropes as Anarchaos.Suffers from the same issues as most short story collections, namely the content is usually hit and miss with too many of those "joke" short stories written entirely for a lame punchline as well as not really being up to promise of the title but is still an interesting collection for fans of such a distinguished crime author.
