In the same vein as Heartways and Futureways?the first two books in the Ways series?Crimeways is literature as conceptual art: a unique collaboration between the Whitney Museum of American Art, Printed Matter, Inc., and Arsenal. Crimeways is a faux mystery/crime "novel" in which each chapter is written by a different contributor, all of whom create stories of cops, pis, and fugitives that simultaneously work within and outside the genre.

Crimeways tells the tale of a New York under seige by aesthetic terrorists who scheme to destroy a New York landmark in the name of art. The book's hero, who stumbles onto the plot, attempts to save New York from artistic fascists and bad taste.

Conceived by internationally acclaimed artist Rita McBride, Crimeways is the third book in the Ways Series. Books in the Ways Series?which include contributions by more than fifty different artists, architects, writers, journalists, scientists, curators, and critics?exploit and decipher genre writing with an entertaining and refreshing collective structure.

Rita is an artist living and working in Cologne and New York. Her projects vary greatly from unorthodox books to monumental sculptures.

Rita McBride's profile page

Matthew Licht is the author of the detective trilogy World Without Cops and the stoner redemption novel The Withering Fire. He is also the director of the underground classics The Kerguelen of a Cartoonist, Snatcher At The Y, Bean Dip/Bean Trip, Kevin Kline and 1/2 and Odessa Tarzan. His collection of short stories The Moose Show (Salt Pubs.) was nominated for the Frank O'Connor prize. Justine, Joe & The Zen Garbageman, a new collection, is forthcoming, also from Salt.

Matthew Licht's profile page

Crimeways reads more like a piece of art than a collection of stories. It should come as no surprise that the mastermind behind the project is Rita McBride a sculptor who is responsible for four books of a similiar structure (Heartways, Futureways and Myways being the others)...This book investigates a whole other realm of possibility in the unreality of crime. It pushes readers to think outside the box on the one topic that has most folks in the Western world trembling. Appreciate disaster from a different angle and you might start to inhabit a world like the eccentric characters that come up in this bizarre narrative landscape.
?Fast Forward Weekly

Fast Forward Weekly

When Marcel Duchamp declared that America's best art form was its plumbing, he was onto something. After all, this continent has a long tradition of ignoring what it creates best until someone else dares to call it valuable. Perhaps sensing who his initial audience would be, Edgar Allan Poe, the first writer of mystery fiction, made his detective a Frenchman. In the 164 years since "Murders in the Rue Morgue," the genre Poe created both contributed to the modern novel's bag of tricks and has been cliched right into the gutter...Still if no one story in the collection stands out, seeing a single idea handled by multiple writers is a delightful mystery and worth the investigation into how popular writing works.
-eye Weekly

eye Weekly