Customer Reviews

The Best American Mystery Stories 1998 (The Best American Series)

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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...

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.

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.

I trusted Sue Grafton to put together a good collection, and I was not disappointed. This collection represents 20 authors, one story each. In this type anthology, there always seems to be a presumption that the best story by one author is better than the second best by another author, but it is a good selection. There is a listing in the back of the book of additional stories that were not included. That is always a judgment call by the editor, i.e., deciding which stories to use if there is a page limit for the collection. The stories are from a wide range of sources ranging from mainstream magazines to regional literary magazines. Short biographical sketches of the authors are included in the back of the book.

While stories in a collection can be of mixed quality, I generally liked all the stories and, as usual in anthologies, found some authors I was not previously acquainted with. Anthologies are usually a good way to find references to authors who can be checked on for other work - I often find novels that way.

Although I can't say that I enjoyed every story, I can say that I enjoyed nearly all the stories, which is about as good as you can get with short story anthologies. A great collection of great mystery stories! I hope the series continues for quite a long time...I look forward to each new edition!!

As a whole, the stories in this year's collection are significantly better than last year's. I applaud the publisher for bringing us this series. Unfortunately, the editors/publishers still seem to think they need some well-known authors to make the series work, even if that means lowering the quality of the collection. In particular, the stories by Mary Higgins Clark and Jay McInerney are terrible. In addition, the "story" by Walter Mosley is not really a story at all, but a slice out of his novel that doesn't stand well alone. The editor also might change the policy that qualifies any story for consideration as long as a crime is involved. A couple of stories fit the criterion, but fall short of being "mysteries" by any reasonable definition. Nonetheless, I recommend the book to mystery fans. But focus on the lesser-known writers (for example, Steve Yarbrough), and hope that next year the editors opt for quality of the work over name recognition.

as soon as i finished the book, i got online and ordered the 1999 edition.i never was much of a fiction reader, but i'm hooked now

Cover to cover, this is one of the best of the annual Mystery Stories series. Many of the stories were innovative and well-written. There were some simplistic, predictable plotlines but still a really enjoyable read.

Some of these stories all right, a few good. I chose it because it was edited by Sue Grafton, but I'm not really a short story fan; just like to have a collection for guests, etc.

This is a great collection of mystery, suspense and crime stories. They have chosen many talented authors such as Lawrence Block, Janice Law, Scott Bartel, Merril Joan Gerber, and many others. There is violence, drugs, cruelties, a contract killer, and other plots. By Ruth Thompson author of "The Blue grass Dream" and "Natchez Above The River"