Series: Best American | Publication Date: October 10, 2001
Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads hundreds of pieces from dozens of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to the twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind.
THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2001 will thrill fans of all reaches of the genre. The legendary mystery writer Lawrence Block offers chilling tales from best-selling writers as well as talented up-and-comers. Ranging from traditional detective cases to psychological studies to atmospheric scene-setters, these stories illustrate the variety and broad range of styles, plots, and characters Block admires in the genre. With Block as guest editor and a stellar roster of suspense veterans and rising stars, the 2001 edition will delight mystery afcionados and all lovers of great fiction.
Did you hear the story about the guy who shows up at his brother's house after a long absence with a van full of old wedding dresses? It's called "Family," was written by San Francisco-based Dan Leone, appeared originally in a magazine called "Literal Latte," and is one of the 20 unusually excellent tales of crime and mystery published in 2000 and collected by the hard-working series editor Otto Penzler and MWA Grand Master Lawrence Block for this fifth annual celebration of the form. Like one of those taster menus of small but wonderful items served at top restaurants, this is a rich and satisfying collation. Although every story is well worth reading, particularly dazzling are "Lobster Night," by Russell Banks, whose first line -"Stacy didn't mean to tell Noonan that when she was seventeen she was struck by lightning" deserves an award of its own; William Gay's "The Paperhanger," a Hitchcock movie waiting for the Master to return to make it; and "Her Hollywood" by Michael Hyde, which just about slides in under the wire of Block's dictum that "a crime or the threat of a crime is a central element" but is a chilling exercise in any genre. More traditional, but no less satisfying, are cop stories ("Erie's Last Day," by Steve Hockensmith, and "Under Suspicion," by Clark Howard); a private eye outing (Jeremiah Healy's "A Book of Kells"); and even an FBI effort (T. Jefferson Parker's "Easy Street"). A most impressive compilation especially given that, as Block notes in his introduction, two thirds of those selected were writers whose names were new to him.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Review
"For those of you who like your vittles cafeteria-style, this is a nice spread of taste treats." The Washington Post
Lawrence Block (b. 1938) is the recipient of a Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and an internationally renowned bestselling author. His prolific career spans over one hundred books, including four bestselling series as well as dozens of short stories, articles, and books on writing. He has won four Edgar and Shamus Awards, two Falcon Awards from the Maltese Falcon Society of Japan, the Nero and Philip Marlowe Awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers Association of the United Kingdom. In France, he has been awarded the title Grand Maitre du Roman Noir and has twice received the Societe 813 trophy.
Born in Buffalo, New York, Block attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Leaving school before graduation, he moved to New York City, a locale that features prominently in most of his works. His earliest published writing appeared in the 1950s, frequently under pseudonyms, and many of these novels are now considered classics of the pulp fiction genre. During his early writing years, Block also worked in the mailroom of a publishing house and reviewed the submission slush pile for a literary agency. He has cited the latter experience as a valuable lesson for a beginning writer.
Block's first short story, "You Can't Lose," was published in 1957 in Manhunt, the first of dozens of short stories and articles that he would publish over the years in publications including American Heritage, Redbook, Playboy, Cosmopolitan, GQ, and the New York Times. His short fiction has been featured and reprinted in over eleven collections including Enough Rope (2002), which is comprised of eighty-four of his short stories.
In 1966, Block introduced the insomniac protagonist Evan Tanner in the novel The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep. Block's diverse heroes also include the urbane and witty bookseller--and thief-on-the-side--Bernie Rhodenbarr; the gritty recovering alcoholic and private investigator Matthew Scudder; and Chip Harrison, the comical assistant to a private investigator with a Nero Wolfe fixation who appears in No Score, Chip Harrison Scores Again, Make Out with Murder, and The Topless Tulip Caper. Block has also written several short stories and novels featuring Keller, a professional hit man. Block's work is praised for his richly imagined and varied characters and frequent use of humor.
A father of three daughters, Block lives in New York City with his second wife, Lynne. When he isn't touring or attending mystery conventions, he and Lynne are frequent travelers, as members of the Travelers' Century Club for nearly a decade now, and have visited about 150 countries.
As other reviewers have noted, the stories in this book, for the most part, are not traditional mysteries.
They are, however, very well written.
It is not necessarily a fun or entertaining read--for the most part, the stories explore the darker side of human nature and American culture--but a worthwhile book that shows that the short story is alive and well.
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I should note from the start that I only listened to the nine stories on the CD audio edition, so my comments only reflect roughly half of the book's contents. I have to say that they were a bit of a disappointment overall. One would expect a collection of mystery stories to have some, well, mystery... Instead, the stories are heavy on atmosphere, emphasizing it over plot, and sometimes there is only the slimmest connection to crime at all. Roxana Robinson's "Face Lift" for example, is a curious inclusion by any measure. I'm not any kind of genre purist, nor am I big fan of whodunits, or traditional mysteries-but it seems like the editors were going more for stories with cachet (either a name literary author such as Russell Banks or Joyce Carol Oates, or a name source publication like Esquire), rather than actually finding mysteries that are great reads. I'm also not one who likes to puzzle out the endings to mysteries ahead of time, but I had the endings spotted halfway through the three most "traditional" mysteries of the nine on the CD (which were also my three favorites as it happened). The only story to make me somewhat interested in reading something else by the author was Peter Robinson's "Missing in Action", which had an interesting WWII setting and a light touch. Still, one out of nine isn't a great success rate, and if the other eleven stories are of the same ilk, I'd have to recommend skipping this year's collection.
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I was a little irritated when I finished this collection. The stories, on the whole, are fine, and there are several excellent ones. But the collection's title is misleading. The definition of a "mystery story" used by the editors was any story involving a crime, and even that definition gets stretched a bit. For example, under this broad definition, a story about violence among prison inmates, or about the emotional fallout on a woman who was the victim of a sexual assault as a young girl, get included in the collection. That doesn't mean they are bad stories, of course, but "mystery" stories? I understand that limiting the collection of true detective stories may be too restrictive, but in my view a "mystery" story should have an element of suspense - not to put to fine a point on it, but some element of mystery - that a number of these stories lack. Is the field of mystery stories really so moribund that they couldn't fill a collection without broadening the definition so much as to make it meaningless? If you're looking for a collection of good stories loosely connected to crime and violence, this collection's a good bet. Otherwise, it's hardly what it claims to be.
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IF I WERE A PAINTER this is how I would paint the Napa Valley: not like those gallery scenes of mustard in bloom or harvest-ripe fruit, but this ghostly silver secret landscape, the vines dormant and white with frost, the moon full, jackrabbits scattering across the roadway before me like mercury beads. Read the first pageBrowse Sample Pages: Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
