{"id":7704,"date":"2019-01-15T06:43:44","date_gmt":"2019-01-15T11:43:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7704"},"modified":"2021-10-30T13:39:27","modified_gmt":"2021-10-30T17:39:27","slug":"best-american-mystery-stories-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7704","title":{"rendered":"*****Best American Mystery Stories – 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"reading\"
(Pedro Ribeiro Sim\u014des, cc license)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Edited by Louise Penny \u2013 What an entertaining collection this is! The stories cover a wide range of mystery\/crime\/suspense writing, with a fair bit of edge. Edited by Louise Penny from a collection assembled under the direction of Otto Penzler, the twenty stories, all published in 2017, first appeared in US crime magazines, in literary magazines, in themed anthologies, and in single-author collections by T.C. Boyle, Lee Child, Scott Loring Sanders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Says editor Penny, \u201cA great short story is like a great\npoem. Crystalline in clarity. Each word with purpose. Lean, muscular, graceful.\nNothing wasted. A brilliant marriage of intellect, rational thought, and\ncreativity.\u201d This edition underscores her point on every page. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though most of the stories run to about twenty pages, Lee\nChild, with \u201cToo Much Time,\u201d doubles that length. He meticulously describes how\nthe redoubtable Jack Reacher digs himself in deeper and deeper with Maine\npolice while all the time working on an unexpected (by this reader) solution to\nhis precarious situation. Joyce Carol Oates also provides a near-novella with\n\u201cPhantomwise: 1972,\u201d about a na\u00efve college coed who makes consistently bad\nchoices and the men who exploit them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the stories take place in the good old US of A, from\nthe sketchy surrounds of Paul Marks\u2019s Venice Beach (\u201cWindward\u201d) to James Lee\nBurke\u2019s Cajun country (\u201cThe Wild Side of Life\u201d), though a few are set in more\nexotic climes: Africa in David H. Hendrickson\u2019s Derringer-winning \u201cDeath in the\nSerengeti,\u201d the tropical and fictional island of St. Pierre (\u201cBreadfruit\u201d by\nBrian Silverman), and the Republic of Korea (\u201cPX Christmas\u201d by Martin Lim\u00f3n). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The selected authors found clever and creative ways to\ndeploy the staple characters of crime fiction\u2014unfaithful wives (\u201cWaiting on\nJoe\u201d by Scott Loring Sanders), assassins (\u201cTakeout\u201d by Rob Hart) and serial\nkillers (\u201cAll Our Yesterdays\u201d by Andrew Klavan). They deal with classic crime\nsituations too: trying to escape a difficult past (\u201cSmoked\u201d by Michael Bracken\nand \u201cGun Work\u201d by John M. Floyd) or the long tail of a super-secret job (\u201cSmall\nSigns\u201d by Charlaine Harris); prison breaks (\u201cCabin Fever\u201d by David Edgerley\nGates), and the double or is it triple? cross (\u201cY is for Yangchuan Lizard\u201d by\nAndrew Bourelle and \u201cRule Number One\u201d by Alan Orloff).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A couple of the scams were so deftly described that you may\nfind yourself grinning with the vigilante surprise of Michael Connelly\u2019s \u201cThe\nThird Panel\u201d and the flim-flamming of an elderly man in TC Boyle\u2019s \u201cThe Designee,\u201d\nin which you must decide how complicit the elderly \u201cvictim\u201d is. It\u2019s the best\nstory of his I\u2019ve ever read. There\u2019s also a thought-provoking twist in \u201cBanana\nTriangle Six\u201d by Louis Bayard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This talented collection of authors fills their stories with\ngreat lines, though one of my favorites comes from \u201cThe Apex Predator,\u201d by\nWilliam Dylan Powell, wherein the main character claims he learned in Uncle\nSam\u2019s navy the \u201cmost useful tactical skill ever developed by humankind\u2014and it\u2019s\nnot swimming or fighting or tying knots. It\u2019s the art of bullshitting someone\nso you don\u2019t get in trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019ve been glancing over the author names looking for\n(and finding) many that are familiar, you may also have noticed the\nnear-absence of women authors. Joyce Carol Oates who has more than a hundred\npublished books is not a surprise in this list, nor is Charlaine Harris, who\u2019s\nbeen publishing mystery fiction since 1981. It\u2019s a real mystery why no other\naccomplished, newer authors appear here. Women are somewhat more prominent in\nthe list of \u201cOther Distinguished Mystery Stories of 2017\u201d at the back of the\nvolume, where nearly a third are women (10 of 31).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which publications brought these stories to light in the\nfirst place (and where you might find next year\u2019s winner\u2019s now)? Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine<\/em> published\nfour of the stories, Mystery Tribune<\/em>\n(two), and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery\nMagazine, Fiction River, and Switchblade<\/em>, one apiece. Also Level Best\nBooks\u2019 anthologies (Noir at the Salad Bar<\/em>\nand Snowbound<\/em>) produced a pair of\nthem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Edited by Louise Penny \u2013 What an entertaining collection this is! The stories cover a wide range of mystery\/crime\/suspense writing, with a fair bit of edge. Edited by Louise Penny from a collection assembled under the direction of Otto Penzler, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4432,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"*****Best American Mystery Stories - 2018 - If you snatch your reading time in small bites and commutes, fill that time with the good stuff.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,54,40,3,632,126,120,66],"tags":[1474,1475],"class_list":["post-7704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-detective","category-fiction","category-mystery","category-police","category-reading-2","category-short-story","category-suspense","tag-louise-penny","tag-otto-penzler"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/15380444156_cbbf170801_z.jpg?fit=320%2C320&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-20g","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7704"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9332,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7704\/revisions\/9332"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}