Now in its 2024 edition, The Best American Mystery and Suspense, an annual compilation of notable mystery and suspense stories, has evolved quite a bit since Steph Cha took over from long-time series editor Otto Penzler. He now publishes a rival anthology, The Best Mystery Stories of the Year. The publisher (and readers like me, too) believed Penzler’s long-running series needed a refresher, to involve more diverse perspectives and sources, and to include stories addressing more contemporary themes. Truthfully, the number of magazines and anthologies devoted to crime fiction as well as the literary magazines and special collections that publish occasional stories in this genre, means that no matter what selection criteria editors adopt, they’ll likely have a wealth of excellent stories to choose from. Cosby, as guest editor, and Cha made some excellent picks for this volume.

In my not-disinterested opinion, the pre-Cha era sadly neglected the stories of female writers. Since her tenure, that issue has been well addressed, along with the work of more diverse authors and themes. In the 2024 edition, two-thirds of the stories are by women authors, compared to one-third in Penzler’s most recent collection (much better than he used to do, at least). Contemporary problems—toxic phone apps, violent street protests, incriminating blog posts—are here and have a “story behind the headlines” feel to them. Several have adopted innovative or atypical presentation styles.

I particularly liked “For I Hungered, and Ye Gave Me” by Barrett Bowlin, which consists of verbatim answers to unstated (but easily guessed—correctly?) questions about a possible crime, and Alyssa Cole’s “Just a Girl,” which shows, via TikTok and podcast excerpts, YouTube transcripts, and the like, the mushrooming of a vicious online attack on an essentially blameless co-ed. Stanton McCaffery’s moving “Will I See the Birds When I’m Gone” simply comprises an incarcerated man’s letters to his neglectful mother, written over a 23-year period.

Women writers may be more likely to talk about the extremes and entanglements of mother love and the long-term consequences of rape, as in the stories by Mary Thorson, Latoya Watkins, or Tananarive Due. They show that, regardless of circumstances, children still have that pull on their mothers, whether for good or ill.

The traditional “perfect murder” theme also appears, as in Abby Geni’s clever “The Body Farm,” which involves some grisly research, and Nils Gilbertson’s “Lovely and Useless Things,” which takes place in a speakeasy during Prohibition. Some perfect murders are successful, and others are not. Shannon Taft’s “Monster” is a satisfying example. I’m not sure whether Diana Gould intended “Possessory Credit,” her story about a scheming screenwriter and would-be perfect-murderer to be humorous, but I laughed out loud at the predicament he created. “Baby Trap” by Toni LP Kelner is delightfully clever and begins with a Reddit post. More 2024 vibes!

I’ve enjoyed Jordan Harper’s novels, so was poised to like his story, “My Savage Year,” and did. It was one of several involving adolescent confusions, secrets, and bad judgment, including Rebecca Turkewitz’s boarding school nightmare, “Sarah Lane’s School for Girls.” Early mistakes can have a long tail, as the protagonists in these stories learn, especially the suicide hotline counselor in Lisa Unger’s “Unknown Caller.”

Amongst all these tales are several solid traditional mysteries, such as “Scarlet Ribbons” by Megan Abbott about a haunting (or is it?), Frankie Y. Bailey’s “Matter of Trust,” along with Gar Anthony Haywood’s “With the Right Bait” (marital relationships, loosely), Nick Kolakowski’s “Scorpions” (lure of the dark side), Karen Harrington’s “The Mysterious Disappearance of Jason Whetstone” (sibling rivalry—again involving a disgruntled author, humph!), and Bobby Mathews’s “The Funeral Suit” (Western gunslingers).

There’s a lot more to each of these stories, of course, than a capsule summary can convey. As SA Cosby says in his introduction, it’s “magic that happens for a brief moment, like a shooting star streaking across the sky, when you read a story that grabs you by the hand and says, ‘Come with me, see what I have to show you.’” A word about the story sources. Seventeen different publications are represented by these 20 stories, none of them the traditional short mystery story magazines. In the list of 30 additional distinguished stories from 2023 are 21 more publications, including the well-known Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, and Mystery Tribune. Along with new outlets are new writers—a crime and mystery lover’s dream.