The Best American Mystery Stories 2002 (The Best American Series) (Paperback)

by James Ellroy (Editor), Otto Penzler (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Kudos to series editor Otto Penzler and helpers for compiling a short list of 50 candidates for this sixth annual collection-and to guest editor Ellroy for selecting an impressively strong collection of 20 stories that ought to whet readers' appetites for more works by this lineup. In "High School Sweetheart," Joyce Carol Oates shows how far a brilliant premise can carry a writer. Robert B. Parker offers a fine baseball story, "Harlem Nocturne," about Jackie Robinson's off-field difficulties his rookie season. In "Two-Bagger," Michael Connelly also uses a baseball setting for a skillful tale of divided attentions. And Thomas H. Cook takes the gloves off in a yarn that ferrets out the truth behind a fixed boxing match in "The Fix." Perhaps the rarest gem is Brendan DuBois's "A Family Game," in which a bullying baseball dad gets his comeuppance from another parent. James Grady tells a rousing tale of a championship fight held in Montana-but it's the preliminary bout (and its preliminaries) that make "The Championship of Nowhere" one of the anthology's best entries. Clark Howard's "The Cobalt Blues" features a trio of men with absolutely nothing to lose as they plan a daring and (somewhat) altruistic caper that leaves readers chuckling. Darker tales, but very effective ones, come from established pros like Stuart M. Kaminsky, Annette Meyers and Joe R. Lansdale. This is a sterling collection that should both entertain and serve as an introduction to some formidable new talents. (Oct. 15)
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Series editor Penzler deserves credit for acknowledging in his foreword to this year's installment of the best American mystery stories that several of the selections were written originally for two of his own sports-themed anthologies. He defends their inclusion (volume editor Ellroy made the final choices from a group of 50 stories picked by Penzler) on the grounds of quality, and he's right. Two of the three boxing stories (from Murder on the Ropes), Thomas H. Cook's "The Fix" and James Grady's "The Championship of Nowhere," are among the collection's highlights--stories that use the myth-drenched ring milieu to reflect on the agony of making choices when there are no choices to make. Big names dominate this time (Connelly, Malone, Parker, and Lansdale, among them), and they don't disappoint. In the introduction, Ellroy's typically stylized ruminations on the mystery short story ("Whap--you circumnavigate quicksville") will have fans salivating and leave others scratching their not-quite-hip-enough heads. But he's right, too: these stories pack plenty of whap. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 405 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (October 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618124934
• ISBN-13: 978-0618124930
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #652,253 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Return of an Annual Classic, October 11, 2002

By	Brian D. Rubendall (Oakton, VA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Best American Mystery Stories 2002 (Best American (TM)) (Hardcover)

"Best American Mystery Stories 2002" is the latest volume in what has become a very fine and enjoyable series. Given that it is so difficult to find magazines featuring short stories these days, it's nice to have the best culled out and placed in one volume. James Ellroy of "American Tabloid" and "L.A. Confidential" fame is the guest editor this year, which may explain why this year's model is a touch more hard-boiled that the 2001 edition. Additionally, it should be noted that the 2002 collection also contains several boxing and baseball stories because series editor Otto Penzler put together theme anthologies for both sports in the last year.

That said, the stories in the 2002 collection run the gamut from literary to whodunnits? to crime stories. How you like each one will probably depend on your tastes as a reader. All are expertly written by the best mystery writers working in the genre today. My personal favorites are Thomas J. Cook's boxing story "The Fix," Clark Howard's grim caper story "The Cobalt Blues," and Stuart M. Kaminisky's gritty crime saga "Sometimes Something Goes Wrong." Some of the stories didn't work for me, particularly the literary stories, but that's mostly a matter of personal taste.

The short story, particularly the mystery short story, is a disappearing art form. "Best American Mystery Stories 2002" is doing its part to keep it alive and well.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars not very mysterious, February 26, 2003

By	[e-mail] "[e-mail]" (Beaumont, tx USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

I don't buy the Best American Mystery Stories every year (like I do for the Best American Short Stories, Essays, Science and Nature Writing, and now Nonrequired Reading). What I do is glance at the editor and at the authors included within. This year's edition is edited by James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential and the rest of his L.A. Quartet). And it has a story by Joe Lansdale, "The Mule Rustlers" --which is a great story, with a nice, humorous twist at the end-- (Lansdale is the greatest Texas writer whose name isn't McMurtry); and a story by Joyce Carol Oates, "The High School Sweetheart"--which is a story very much in her style, and somewhat 'experimental', but isn't as good as what she normally does. The best two stories in this year's volume is Brendan Dubois' "A Family Game" (great twist of an ending) and Daniel Waterman's "A Lepidopterist's Tale", which really only kicks in at the end, and reminds me of an Oates story. Stuart M. Kaminsky, Fred Melton, Annette Meyers, Michael Connelly, Thomas H. Cook, Sean Doolittle, and Joe Gores also have good stories within. What detracts from the collection: the fact that while these may be good stories, there isn't a whole lot of mystery to them; John Biguenet's dull story "It Is Raining in Bejucal"; David Edgerley Gates' mediocre "The Blue Mirror"; James Grady's unreadable "The Championship of Nowhere"; amd F.X. Toole's story "Midnight Emissions", which I was unable to finish. When reading the collection you'll notice an unusual amount of sports stories--mainly baseball and boxing stories (or maybe not surprising since Otto Penzler edited the two books those stories came from).

If you are looking for really good 'mystery' stories, you probably want to move along, but there are 11 really good stories (that's over half) to read. Some you would call mystery, some you wouldn't.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Pick and Choose, January 18, 2004

By	Joshua V. Schneider (Hawaii) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This anthology of "Mystery" stories is a puzzling mix of genuine mysteries and several other stories that belong to other genres, as other reviewers have pointed out. Many of them would be better categorized as short dramas or action thrillers. A good chunk of the stories also are unnecessarily lewd in a way that serves no useful purpose in the story. I did, however, enjoy several of the stories, and found some to be rather humorous. Not all the ones I enjoyed fit my understanding of mystery, for example, the "Championship of Nowhere" and the "Mule Rustlers" were good non-mystery fiction. Basically this collection is not what you might expect or hope for, but it does have several redeeming stories.