THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2009 is a pretty solid anthology of short stories, only some of which are true “mystery stories.” The problem with this volume, for readers who actually expect a book with the term “mystery stories” in the title to be comprised entirely of such, is that fewer than half of its 20 tales originally saw print in publications devoted to the crime genre. Few of us in the mood for a mystery are going to pick up THE NEW YORKER or THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW.
And when you figure in that guest editor Jeffery Deaver is one of the trickiest crime writers in the short form at work today — if you’ve never read his short stories, or those of Peter Lovesey, you should — this volume becomes even weaker. (Note: I know that Lovesey is a Brit and so could not be included in a book of American mystery stories. I’ve met the man, heard him speak. Very British.)
Maybe I’m way off-base here and even a tangential connection to crime qualifies a story these days to be a “mystery,” but look at something like Tom Bissell’s “My Interview with the Avenger,” in which a writer meets a masked superhero vigilante type late at night. This is a conversation, a one-set, one-act play, maybe. Chekovian. All character and no plot. N.J. Ayres’ “Rust” is about the private life of cops but again, the mystery element is not dominant.
Maybe I’m being too much of a purist, too strictly bound by genre definitions. Crime stories are about crime, but not necessarily just about the whodunit aspect. They put the emphasis on psychology and motivation. Mystery stories are another breed of cat entirely, concerned as they are with puzzles and action.
But the stories in this year’s collection — the 13th of the series — are all fine fictions, including tales of both types by James Lee Burke, Michael Connelly, Clark Howard, Alice Munro, Joyce Carol Oates and 15 others. I wish Deaver had been less modest and included a yarn of his own, but maybe there’s an editorial rule against that. I also would have liked for his introduction to have been longer than seven pages. Yes, he’s that good — even his intros are entertaining.
Also, I could have given up Ron Carlson’s “Beanball,” with it baseball background — not for lack of quality, but because it’s really a novelette and Deaver could have pitched in three more stories in its place.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch tosses a bone — and a right tasty one — to fanciers of historical crime stories with “G-Men,” featuring Robert Kennedy and the ever-smug J. Edgar Hoover.
Go into this volume knowing what to expect and you won’t be disappointed. The quality of the fiction is high, but the stories frequently go beyond what you may think of when you think of “mystery.” If you’re not a genre purist, you will be most pleased. —Doug Bentin
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE BODIES LEFT BEHIND by Jeffery Deaver
• THE BROKEN WINDOW by Jeffery Deaver
• MANHATTAN IS MY BEAT by Jeffery Deaver
• MORE TWISTED: COLLECTED STORIES, VOL. II by Jeffery Deaver
• ROADSIDE CROSSES by Jeffery Deaver
Related posts:
- The Adventure of the Missing Detective and 19 of the Year’s Finest Crime and Mystery Stories
- A Prisoner of Memory and 24 of the Year’s Finest Crime and Mystery Stories
- Mystery Writers of America Presents The Blue Religion: New Stories About Cops, Criminals, and the Chase
- A New Omnibus of Crime
- The Collected Short Stories of Louis L’Amour, Volume Six: The Crime Stories
