The Best American Mystery Stories, Volume 16

October 2, 2000
Guest editor Westlake has done an outstanding job selecting 20 stories published in 1999 for this stellar anthology, now in its fourth year, which should continue to garner big sales. In his introduction he wonders at the form's durability. The financial rewards are small, and these days short stories won't make a literary reputation. Why then do its practitioners persist? As with jazz, that other great American contribution to world art, they engage in it "primarily for the love of doing it," asserts Westlake. In contrast to the novel, where digressions and red herrings are the norm, unity of effect is all, as exemplified by the inventor of the detective story, Edgar Allan Poe--and by the contemporary writers represented in this volume. The names here range from the late Shel Silverstein, bestselling children's book author, whose rollicking tale, "The Guilty Party," stands as a fitting swan song for this versatile talent, to Thomas H. McNeely, whose quietly chilling psychological study, "Sheep," is his first published work of fiction. Robert Girardi's novella, "The Defenestration of Aba Sid," works both as a tale of comic absurdity and as an anti-Grisham lawyer story. In a foreword, series editor Otto Penzler comments on how mysteries have evolved in both style and content. Over the life of the genre, stories have become more complex, more textured. When Penzler says "be prepared for the unexpected, and be ready for some of the best prose being written today," he's not overstating the case. This title will enjoy brisk library sales but is also poised to benefit from the continued general-reader interest in matters mysterious.

November 1, 1999
In compiling the third volume in this annual series, which is edited by Otto Penzler, McBain (the 87th Precinct procedurals) has included tales that fall outside strict genre definitions. The collection is richer for that wide range. "Survival," Joseph Hansen's deftly characterized 13th Hack Bohannon story, follows the stable-owner/PI into a racist compound in the Oregon woods. Held there on the eve of a major offensive, Bohannon interacts credibly with his captors: there's not one false note in the story. In David K. Harford's "A Death on the Ho Chi Minh Trail," Military Police Investigator Carl Hatchett finds out why there were no bullet holes in the shirt of an American soldier who was apparently killed in a firefight with the VC. Reminiscent of her novel Them, Joyce Carol Oates's "Secret Silent" delineates a wrenching 24-hour period in which a young woman separates from both the pull and the burden of her upstate New York family's limited expectations. Lawrence Block, Stephen King, Philip K. Margolin and John Updike are among the 17 other contributors to this compendium of highly accomplished stories drawn from a variety of sources, mystery-specific and not.