Anyone Can Die by James LePore

Anyone Can Die is a collection of three short stories, each one featuring a different character from James LePore's debut novel, A World I Never Made.  In LePore's introduction to this collection, he explains that in the process of writing A World I Never Made he developed quite a bit of history and backstory for each of his main characters but realized that there isn't really a place for that in your standard thriller.  Anyone Can Die is his chance to flesh out that bigger picture he'd imagined.

The three stories(descriptions from the back cover):


"Till Death Do Us Part" -- A young Pat Nolan and his wife are on their honeymoon in New Mexico when they find a bond they didn't know they had as they are forced to confront trouble in the form of a surly trio of locals.

"God's Warriors" -- Megan Nolan, a cynical American woman on her own in Europe makes a life-changing decision that both reveals and belies her true character.

"Max" -- Max French, a quirky, deadly and, in his own eyes, oddly lovable FBI agent faces a personal drama that will set the course of his future.

I was intrigued by this idea, a sort of prequel in the form of a short story collection.  As I read, I wasn't sure what to make of the fact that each story made some reference to ethnicity, with varying degrees (in my opinion)of stereotyping and/or generalizations.  I may be hyper-sensitive at this exact instant, as I've been reading about perceptions of racism in Agatha Christie's books, but nonetheless it was a distracting element for me.  Yet even in the midst of writing this review, I'm still waffling on my desire to read A World I Never Made.  I do sort of want to see what happens with these characters -- I want to know what "the Megan Nolan affair" is, I want to learn what happens in Pat and Lorrie's relationship, and I want to know how Max's experiences as a child and young man have affected the middle-aged FBI agent.  I may just pick up A World I Never Made in spite of my reservations about this collection.