The Best American Mystery Stories (2009)
Best-selling novelist Jeffrey Deaver edits this collection of the genre’s finest from 2009. Featuring “gritty tales told with panache.”
Like previous anthologies in this “best of” series, the impressive 13th volume favors crime stories over whodunits. As series editor Otto Penzler notes in his foreword, “it has become increasingly difficult to find… a new murder method, or an original way to hide a vital clue.” Readers interested in psychology will be more than satisfied by such tales as Joyce Carol Oates’s “Dear Husband,” a heartrending first-person account of a mother who slaughtered her children, and Tom Bissell’s “My Interview with the Avenger,” about a vigilante superhero. As always, part of the pleasure derives from exposure to writers who have yet to gain the acclaim they deserve, such as Randy Rohn (“The Man Who Fell in Love with the Stump of a Tree”) and Jonathan Tel (“Bola de la Fortuna”).
Praise
“must-read for anybody who cares about crime stories”
—Booklist
“Not a single one of the 20 reprints here is a dud.”
—Kirkus