The Best American Mystery Stories 1998 [Hardcover]

Sue Grafton (Author), Otto Penzler (Author)

Book Description

Series: Best American Mystery Stories | Publication Date: October 30, 1998

This year's guest editor, Sue Grafton has put together a wonderfully diverse collection of stories to surprise and satisfy all fans of the genre. In this volume, best-selling writers such as Mary Higgins Clark, Walter Mosley, Lawrence Block, Jay McInerney, and Donald E. Westlake stand alongside an impressive array of new talent. As Grafton writes in her introduction, "Nowhere is iniquity, wrong-doing, and reparation more satisfying to behold than in the well-crafted yarns spun by the writers represented here." Already a bestseller in its first year, this year's collection of The Best American Mystery Stories promises to keep readers intrigued and coming back for more.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Of the almost 600 mystery stories published in 1997, guest editor Sue Grafton has selected twenty of the finest for this installment of the acclaimed annual series. Authors range from the established (like Lawrence Block, Mary Higgins Clark, and Walter Mosley) to newcomers like David Ballard. All the tales are grounded in mystery fundamentals of crime and (usually) punishment, but each contains some edge or narrative experimentation that sets it apart from the flock. Block's "Keller on the Spot," for example, is a sardonic tale of a killer who saves the grandson of his next hit and winds up questioning his professional path. Stuart Kaminsky's entry, "Find Miriam," is a first-person narrative by Lew Fonesca, a detective who makes his living "finding people, asking questions, answering to nobody." In this case, however, the finding isn't the puzzle--the real puzzle is his client, a troubled husband whose wife has left him without an apparent motive. Throughout, Grafton's tastes run to the literary, and she is fascinated by the cathartic quality of each story. As she writes in her introduction: "Nowhere is iniquity, wrongdoing, and reparation more satisfying to behold than in the well-crafted yarns spun by the writers represented here. While we're plunged into the darkness by their skill and imagination, we're simultaneously reassured that we are safe... from ourselves." --Patrick O'Kelley

From Kirkus Reviews

paper 0-395-83585-2 Series editor Otto Penzler, who picked the 50 stories from which Grafton culled the 20 in this volume, has ranged far afield in search of what Grafton aptly calls crime stories, and the rewards are substantial. Scott Bartelss matter-of-fact heroin idyll first appeared in Tamaqua, Merrill Joan Gerber's tale of an ominously pesky fellow-alumnus in Chattahoochee Review, Steve Yarbrough's sorrowful rural reminiscence in Missouri Review, Dave Shaws droll confession of a chronic slip-and-fall artist in South Dakota Review, Joyce Carol Oatess tormented memoir of a faithless mother in Kenyon Review. Of the entries from more expected sources, the standouts are Stuart Kaminskys unexpectedly bleak quest for a missing wife, Peter Robinsons deceptively mellowed portrait of two old ladies sharing a cottage, and first-timer David Ballards remarkably assured spin on Roald Dahls classic Man from the Southas well as stories by Lawrence Block, John Lutz, and Donald E. Westlake that can also be found in Ed Gorman's rival The Year's 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories (p. 1240). Not the comprehensive yearbook of the genre Gorman produces, but this year, at least, a more rewarding collection of stories. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (October 30, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395835860
• ISBN-13: 978-0395835869
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,300,116 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Solid!, August 18, 2000

By 

Lev Raphael - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Best American Mystery Stories 1998 (The Best American Series) (Paperback)

Sue Grafton introduces this entertaining collection with an important disclaimer. The stories she's picked from mystery magazines and other sources as different as Playboy and the Kenyon Review aren't all quite mysteries in the classical sense. Rather, reflecting a change in the genre that series editor Otto Penzler notes in his Foreword, they're stories whose central feature is simply a crime or a criminal of one kind or another. And sometimes the criminality is handled in an "offbeat" way.

Dave Shaw's well-told "Twelve Days out of Traction" takes us into a petty criminal's mind with amusing results. His narrator runs an insurance scam where he stages falls and his fake lawyer friends write threatening letters that earn his little consortium good money. But it's painful work--as the title indicates--and sometimes he can get surprisingly upstaged. Lawrence Block's intriguing "Keller on the Spot" offers a different twist. Keller's a contract killer sent to Dallas to murder a millionaire, but he ironically ends up becoming involved in the man's life in ways he could never have expected.

David Ballard's tricky "Child Support" imagines the devilish depths to which battling spouses can sink when their marriage collapses. Helen Tucker's rather predictable "The Power of Suggestion" also explores the modern marriage battleground, drawing equally disturbing conclusions about marital happiness and what it drives people to. But Merrill Joan Gerber paints a much brighter picture of family life, one so rich and fulfilling that it inspires more than envy in "This is a Voice from Your Past."

Two standouts in which dogs play pivotal roles are Walter Mosley's simmering excerpt from Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned and Pat Jordan's ominous and richly-detailed gun-running tale, "Beyond Dog." Jordan's story is set in Florida, as is John Lutz's brooding "Night Crawlers" and together with Margaret Maron's deeply satisfying "Prayer for Judgment," this triad offers the collection's most absorbing use of atmosphere.

The stories in this anthology use American settings with three notable exceptions. Peter Robinson's evocative "The Two Ladies of Rose Cottage" is set in Yorkshire and surprisingly centers around Thomas Hardy. Taking place in today's London, Edward D. Hoch's quietly clever "The Old Spies Club" answers a question that has possessed international thriller writers in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse: where's the beef? Hoch finds his subject in imagining a Cold War-era secret about to escape, and the somewhat hapless attempts to keep that from happening. Best-selling thriller writer John Lescroart ably fills in a blank in the Sherlock Holmes canon, giving life to Watson's passing comment about a "missing story." His rousing "The Giant Rat of Sumatra" launches Holmes against his old nemesis Moriarity, who threatens the world with a very contemporary evil.

The biographical notes at the end of the book also include the authors' reports on the genesis of their stories, and in some cases, these little narratives are as captivating as the stories themselves--or more so...

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good anthology to study if you write mystery fiction., June 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Best American Mystery Stories 1998 (Hardcover)

I saw this book featured in one of the major book stores, so I glanced at a copy while sitting in one of their reading chairs. I started reading the first story, "Child Support" by David Ballard, and I just couldn't put it down. That story kept me on the edge of my chair, and then when I saw that he was a new writer, I came online and bought the book.

This anthology has an interesting mix. I agree with some of the comments above about the bigger name authors having the weaker stories (except for Lawrence Block's "Keller" story, which won the Edgar Award last year -- he is incapable of writing a bad story). It's a good anthology to study if you write fiction, because it showcases what's hot now, where it's being published, and why: strong characterization, novel ideas, and lots of emotion. It also features two stories that were first sales (Ballard's is one of them), which is encouraging, if only to show that, yes, new writers are out there and can make it into a year's best anthology.

I'm glad I stumbled across this anthology. I'll be looking forward to the next one.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A nice read, December 21, 2001

By 

Angel L. Soto (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Best American Mystery Stories 1998 (The Best American Series) (Paperback)

Doing a review on an anthology is not easy since there are a multitude of stories written by several authors. This book comprises a collection of the best mystery stories of 1998. Sue Grafton was right in saying most of the stories are crime novels, which is precisely what they are. I was pleasantly surprised by two of the stories, CHILD SUPPORT by David Ballard and SECRETS by Janice Law.

In the first story, the author takes a simple child custody story as told by the point of view of the father. He then gets into an extraordinary circumstance that jeopardizes his relationship with his son. What makes this story interesting is that it is narrated by the ex-husband, leaving the reader with the preconceptions left by the storyteller. One must remember a lesson given to us by Agatha Christie in some of her books. It is never to take the narrator's story as face value. It is not till one reaches the end that one gets the rest of the story.

SECRETS was another delightful surprise. It is a revenge story several years in the making. Its main theme is the power of motherhood and the extremes that they will go in protecting their children.

Another interesting aspect of this book is a story by Stuart Kaminsky called FIND MIRIAM. It is an abbreviated version of his novel VENGEANCE. I assume he wrote the short story before he decided to make it a novel. It takes a genius to implement that same story in a novel and I think Kaminsky pulls it off.