I was hoping this would be a better collection than it was. I liked the following stories, and give them all 4-4.5 stars.

Einstein’s Sabbath—David Levien
The Degree—Joe R. Lansdale
The Reasoners—Ian Rankin
That Golden Way—Owen King
Foundational Education—Seanan McGuire
Goon #4—Tod Goldberg

I was especially glad I read the Levien story, because it sent me on an fascinating internet search for information about Einstein and Jewish student life at Princeton, and I found this neat article https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2022/02/beginning-jewish-student-life-....

The Lovesey, Straw, and Haywood stories were decently written, but the narrators were such creeps, I didn’t want them on my “liked” list.

The rest of the stories were 1-3 star reads I could take or leave. ( )

Lawrence Block is one of favorite mystery writers, and several of his books were made into films including the Liam Neeson film "A Walk Among the Tombstones." More recently the author has editing anthologies like this one that focuses on academia. The stories are varied and interesting but I didn't find any of particularly compelling reading. ( )

As with any anthology there are some that really stand out as great and some that are bad, and a bunch that are somewhere in the middle. The general vibe I got was that many of these writers are annoyed with the way students are treated today and this was their way to write about some of their frustrations and be able to have them turn more violent and deadly… which I enjoyed.

The ones that I really enjoyed were; Requiem for a Homecoming by David Morrell (it had a murder mystery movie feel to it with a twist at the end), An Even Three by Reed Farrel Coleman (a woman is sick of the men’s club in academia and takes it to the extreme), The Reasoners by Ian Rankin (a mystery involving secret societies), and Goon #4 by Tod Goldbert (an assassin trying to find his joy).

The ones that I really didn’t care for… but as with any opinion, others may really like, were; Alt-AC by Warren Moore (almost the entire story was the main character complaining how bad the education system is when it comes to seniority and new teachers… while I completely agreed with it all, I didn’t enjoy an entire story complaining about it.), Monkey in Residence by Xu Xi (it dealt with the politics of today and was weird and was just not something I enjoyed), and Why She Didn’t Tell by John Lescroart (this story was about rape… a man writing about a woman getting raped… I would need to have a face to face discussion to talk about this more in depth, and it just didn’t feel like it fit with the rest of the stories.)

The others were middle of the road for me, some better than others. If you’re involved in higher education, like anthologies, or want to read one of the stories because you really like the author then you should definitely pick this one up. ( )

another excellent anthology edited by Block. ( )