{"id":9338,"date":"2021-11-02T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-02T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9338"},"modified":"2022-01-03T08:00:33","modified_gmt":"2022-01-03T13:00:33","slug":"best-american-mystery-and-suspense-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9338","title":{"rendered":"Best American Mystery and Suspense: 2021 – Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Edited by Steph Cha–Short mystery\/crime fiction lovers in the United States have been more than a little curious to see what changes might be made in this annual series since publisher HarperCollins yanked the project from founding editor Otto Penzler last year. The ousting prompted a juicy literary brouhaha. Some thought Penzler was mistreated, but many (including me) believed that, under Penzler’s guidance, the anthology trended too \u201cwhite and male.\u201d It wasn’t bringing in new voices and, by extension, wasn’t expanding the audience for the crime\/mystery genre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new series editor is award-winning author Steph Cha (Your House Will Pay<\/em><\/a>) with guest editor for the 2021 edition, Alafair Burke (The Better Sister<\/em><\/a>). The process worked the same as under Penzler. Cha, as series editor, took an initial whack at the huge pile of stories and gave her favorites to Burke, who made the final selection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The differences in the new collection are immediately obvious, in the refreshing diversity of authors and story content, as well as in the large number of new (to me) bylines. Undeterred by his ouster, Penzler maintains his past preferences in another new collection, confusingly titled, The Best Mystery Stories of the Year: 2021<\/em>, now published by his own company, The Mysterious Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the titles of the two collections have created some (deliberate?) confusion, their content couldn\u2019t be more different. Only six of Penzler\u2019s twenty-one selections (28 percent) are from women authors, compared to 60 percent of Cha\u2019s. My data may not be perfect, but as far as I can tell, not one of Penzler\u2019s 21 \u201cbest\u201d was written by a person of color, whereas 45 percent of Cha\u2019s selections were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To bring a wider array of voices to the \u201cbest\u201d table, Cha scoured literary journals, anthologies, and online publications. It\u2019s heartening to see the number of high-quality, non-genre magazines that cherish high-quality crime and mystery fiction, well outside the usual stalwarts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diversity is the name of the game here. Not only diversity among the authors and the publications where their stories first found a home, but in the types of mystery and suspense stories represented. Whether your taste is for police procedurals or amateur sleuths, people getting their comeuppance, or giving it, or the hapless nature of criminals, you\u2019ll find stories that hit those buttons, from across the social spectrum. They aren\u2019t all conventional crime stories, either; in several, the characters are up against implacable bureaucracies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tomorrow:<\/em> Some of my favorites<\/a> from this year\u2019s selection.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Edited by Steph Cha–Short mystery\/crime fiction lovers in the United States have been more than a little curious to see what changes might be made in this annual series since publisher HarperCollins yanked the project from founding editor Otto Penzler … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"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 and Suspense - Part 1 -- If you want a sense of the full scope of US crime writing, this is the collection to pick! Here's why.","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":[52,40,3,120,66,104],"tags":[1135,1730],"class_list":["post-9338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-fiction","category-mystery","category-short-story","category-suspense","category-the-morgue","tag-alafair-burke","tag-steph-cha"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2qC","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9338","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=9338"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9349,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9338\/revisions\/9349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}