Editor Lou Anders claims that science fiction, mystery, and historical fiction require very similar writing styles because they all require sprinkling stories with details of ordinary life that are foreign to their audience and doing so without interrupting the flow of the story or overtly pointing out differences between the setting and the real world. He wanted to explore the intersection of all three genres and so Sideways in Crime, his anthology of alternate history mysteries, was born.

A collection of fifteen stories by sixteen writers primarily from science fiction (one is a mystery writer who wrote some science fiction very early in her career), this anthology features a wide variety of alternate history styles and are set in many different eras and cultures. Roman influences, Aztec culture, and alternate Americas appear repeatedly and you'll find a few aliens and other surprises throughout the stories.

While there is at least a semblance of a mystery in each of these tales, it's not the predominant feature in several cases. That bothered me a bit given the theme of the collection. In other cases, the mystery was not a traditional whodunnit, but rather an unexpected answer to an unexplained historical question. For example, we find out what happened to Jimmy Hoffa in one of the most unusual stories included in the book.

That story, "Conspiracies: A Very Condensed 937-Page Novel" by Mike Resnick and Eric Flint, is one of the sillies stories I've ever read but it works anyway because it's unabashedly unrealistic and ridiculous. It never tries to be the least bit serious but rather is deliberately outrageous and completely out there. It also works because of some witty dialogue and great narration such as the following:

"And that is the story, true in every detail, of how Jimmy Hoffa faked his own death a second time and saved America from an alien invasion, the magnitude of which had not been seen since the prior year along the Mexican border."

That story is fun, but it's undeniably fluff. There were two fantastic stories that were a bit more serious. "The Adventure of the Southsea Trunk" by Jack McDevitt is an interesting take on the traditional murder mystery combined with an intrigue surrounding Sherlock Holmes. "Murder in Geektopia" by Paul Di Filippo presents a society where geekiness is revered and popular culture revolves around superheroes and the pulps, a society formed as the result of pascific president William Randolph Hearst and his wife Edith Nesbit who completely revolutionized government and society during his six terms in office. The society is a bit far-fetched, but once taken as a given, the story and the world is fantastic and detailed and appealing.

There were a few disappointing stories, most particularly "Via Vortex" by John Meaney. This story is so disappointing because it has potential; a breakpoint from history involved Einstein and de Broglie meeting up in Paris after escaping the Nazis and discovering vortexes, taking science in that direction instead of towards quantum mechanics. I was all over that, but the problem is that there's an earlier breakpoint with history that doesn't make sense and is never explained. Somehow America evolved as a German speaking land allied with Germany instead of an English colony and eventually its own English-speaking country. I really wanted to know how that came to pass given that there were no German colonies in North America at all in reality. That significant a change really needs at least a brief explanation.

I'm getting a little sick of Aztec-themed stories and I've never been a huge fan of stories where the Roman Empire never fell. Those stories here weren't my favorites. I thought some were fairly well executed for their type, but none really struck me as original or particularly exciting. I only actively disliked one of these stories, though - the first one in the entire book, "Running the Snake" by Kage Baker. Featuring a Britain ruled by druid worshippers in a world dominated by the Roman Empire, this story follows confidence man Will Shaxpur as his slick words fool the masses. Baker seemed to think the novelty of placing William Shakespeare in this environment was sufficient to make a viable story but it really wasn't.

Like most collections of stories, Sideways in Crime is uneven. There are some stories here that I absolutely loved and others that I didn't. I also felt that a few of these stories had only tenuous ties to the theme of alternate history mysteries. However, there are enough good and great stories presented here to make the book worth reading for alternate history fans.