One of the hopes we have when we hear or read an interview with a mystery writer is to get inside the writer’s head, to learn something we didn’t know before. Whether it’s about a series character, a plot idea, or some other element of the writing process, access to the author’s thought processes can be highly rewarding if we care about the particular subject.

The author has a responsibility, it seems to me, to disclose truths or provide insights that might not be otherwise available. If he doesn’t do that, he’s wasting the time of the interviewer as well as the time of the audience or reader.

The interviewer, meanwhile, has the responsibility to ask pertinent, provocative, and probing questions that will result in evocative and educational, perhaps even entertaining, answers. After all, the interviewer is our surrogate; he should ask the questions we want answered, as he has access and we don’t.

A very handsome collection of interviews has just been released that looked so enticing I couldn’t resist, but it badly fails on most counts. “Crime” (Fuel, 349 pages, $45), edited by Alix Lambert, is about as frustrating a book as I’ve encountered for some time. This book is more annoying than a bee to a tightrope walker. Ms. Lambert appears to be a talented writer, having written scripts for HBO’s “Deadwood,” but she also appears to be a very, very lazy interviewer.

With access to such towering talents as Elmore Leonard, David Mamet, Ben Affleck, Thomas H.Cook, and Dennis Lehane, as well as a former New York (and current Los Angeles) police commissioner, William Bratton, not to mention people in the movie industry and a chilling array of real-life criminals, one would expect to find in these pages an extraordinary array of insights that one would be unlikely to encounter anywhere else.

This, alas, is not the case, and there are sharper questions answered on dozens of Web sites. Most of the interviews are only four, five, or six pages long, barely enough to get up to speed, including such insipid subjects as favorite books, people, and video games.

Inevitably, talented people will say interesting things, and there certainly are illuminating and unexpected sentences and paragraphs scattered throughout the book. Here are some samples:

Viggo Mortensen, star of “A History of Violence”: “I do not believe that violence is ever forgivable, even in acts of understandable self-defense.”

Bill Bass, founder of the University of Tennessee’s Forensic Anthropology Center, commonly know as the Body Farm: “I went to the dean in the fall of 1971 and said ‘I need some land to put dead bodies on.’ He didn’t say anything, he just picked up his phone book and found the person on campus that handles land. The university was getting out of the pig grazing business at the time and I started off with a sow barn.”

Thomas H. Cook, Edgar-winning novelist: “I love the characters who just bumble into crime. They begin to talk, they keep talking, and they ultimately talk themselves into something that they never would have done if the conversation hadn’t started.”

Bill Clark, former NYPD homicide detective and writer-producer of “NYPD Blue,” on the O.J. Simpson case: “Ron Goldman’s father was really more about trying to work out a way to make a living off this whole thing. See, I, on the other hand, would have figured out a way to kill this guy. This guy took my son, there’s no way he’s going to be playing golf and living the life. We’re not talking about a maybe innocent, this guy was clearly guilty.”

David Mamet, author, screenwriter, playwright, director: “All drama, and especially tragedy, is about the breakdown of the social order. It’s about drama in terms of circumstance, and tragedy in terms of character. It’s about how we understand something about the fragility of the social order. Drama is something that happens to us, and tragedy is something we do to ourselves.”

Ben Affleck, actor, screenwriter, producer, and director: “There is no drama without conflict and crime is the epitome of conflict.”

There are other worthwhile snippets, of course, but I’d recommend flipping through it at the bookstore or library and saving the money to buy something good. But flip carefully: The hinge broke on this $45 book the first time I opened it.

Now, that’s a crime.

Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual “Best American Mystery Stories.” He can be reached at ottopenzler@mysteriousbookshop.com.