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Otto Penzler

Harry Shannon

Best American Mystery Stories Paperback – 2 October 2012

by Otto Penzler (Author)

108 ratings

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The Best American Series(R)
First, Best, and Best-Selling

The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. Each volume's series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind.

The Best American Mystery Stories 2012 includes

Peter S. Beagle, Kathleen Ford, Mary Gaitskill, Lou Manfredo, Thomas McGuane,
Gina Paoli, T. Jefferson Parker, Kristine Kathryn Rusch,
Charles Todd, Daniel Woodrell, and others

Product details

Publisher : Mariner Books; 2012th edition (2 October 2012)
Language : English
Paperback : 397 pages
ISBN-10 : 0547553986
ISBN-13 : 978-0547553986
Dimensions : 13.97 x 2.45 x 20.96 cm

Customer Reviews:
108 ratings

Product description

From the Back Cover

The Best American Series(r)
First, Best, and Best-Selling
The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country s finest short fiction and nonfiction. Each volume s series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected and most popular of its kind.
The Best American Mystery Stories 2012 includes
Peter S. Beagle, Kathleen Ford, Mary Gaitskill, Lou Manfredo, Thomas McGuane,
Gina Paoli, T. Jefferson Parker, Kristine Kathryn Rusch,
Charles Todd, Daniel Woodrell, and others

[INSERT AUTHOR PHOTO] ROBERT CRAIS, editor, is the 2006 recipient of the Ross Macdonald Literary Award. The author of many New York Times bestsellers, most recently The Sentry and Taken, he lives in Los Angeles.
Look for the other best-selling titles in the Best American series:
THE BEST AMERICAN COMICS
THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS
THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE AND NATURE WRITING
THE BEST AMERICAN NOREQUIRED READING
THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES
THE BEST AMERICAN SPORTS WRITING
THE BEST AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING

About the Author

OTTO PENZLER is a renowned mystery editor, publisher, columnist, and owner of New York's The Mysterious Bookshop, the oldest and largest bookstore solely dedicated to mystery fiction. He has edited more than fifty crime-fiction anthologies. He lives in New York.

Customer reviews

5 star		24%
4 star		19%
3 star		23%
2 star		22%
1 star		12%

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隼人パパ

外人とはツボが違う

Reviewed in Japan on 15 August 2014

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収録されている短編ミステリーのどこがおもしろいのか。どうも、面白さのツボが違うような気がする。いまいちつまらない。

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ハリー

思ったより、ミステリーではありませんでした。、

Reviewed in Japan on 4 October 2013

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ミステリーとの題名でしたが、それほどのミステリーてはありません。

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Duane Schneider

You Take the Good, You Take the Bad...

Reviewed in the United States on 15 June 2013

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The enjoyment you get from this book will depend a lot on the baggage you bring to it. First: expectations. What do you expect a mystery story to be or do? I came in anticipating whodunits with a corpse, a gumshoe, and a list of possible suspects. Maybe that's hard to accomplish in the short story form. Series editor Otto Penzler's nebulous definition of a "mystery" story sounds more like a product disclaimer than a statement of faith. Basically, Penzler contends that any story containing even a whiff of a crime fits the bill. Thus you get something like Thomas McGuane's "The Good Samaritan" where the long con art theft is almost a sidenote to the piece's main themes. Personally, I'm fine with this looser definition since I felt the strongest stories in the collection were the ones that weren't trying to fit any set genre conventions. Second: literary tastes. To my mind, the "New Yorker" stories by McGuane and Mary Gaitskill stood in stark contrast to the more conventional genre exercises by the likes of Tom Andes, Joe Donnelly, Harry Shannon, and T. Jefferson Parker. Some readers will pick up this anthology wanting the standard genre stuff. Personally I felt it was harmed by its proximity to the McGuane and Gaitskill stories that don't quite fit the mold. Gaitskill's story, "The Other Place," was the true standout of the collection. It is a story devoid of any true crimes or mysteries, though full of dark impulses, imagined crimes, and almost-crimes. Effortlessly Gaitskill creates scenes that cause the reader's pulse to quicken--a teen gazing in a sleeping girl's window, a hitchhiker and a cancer victim on a quiet stretch of road. What's amazing about the story is the way Gaitskill is able to articulate broad themes of violence and sexuality in such a compressed manner. Her story is so complex, so resonant, that it causes other stories in the collection to seem tired or one-dimensional by comparison.

8 people found this helpful

Book Bag Lady

Fair to Middling

Reviewed in the United States on 7 April 2013

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Every winter I look forwward to reading the Best American
Mystery series and this year was no exception. The 2012
collection contained many engrossling stories, "The Bridge
Partner," "Vic Primeval" and "Local Knowlege" which was
written by an author who grew up nearby so I am familiar
with the locale. "Trafagar" was the only one that could really be called a mystery and I wish the series had more of these old-fashioned stories where the reader has to use his or her detective skills. Unfortunately there are a few
questionable choices. "The Dog and Cow" should have been
let out to pasture and the "Funeral Bill" lost in the mail.
Almost every year this series rates five stars but a respectable C+ I think is a fair grade. There's always
next year.

fileg

not mysteries

Reviewed in the United States on 10 February 2013

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I was disappointed in this collection, based on the fact that the stories are not mysteries.

Perhaps I am behind the times, and what the genera includes may be expanding. Still, calling the stories mysteries is not really fair to the reader. I don't feel competent to say how good the stories were, as I was judging them as mysteries, which they clearly are not.

Best American Crime stories might be a better title. If you like contemporary fiction with an element of crime, you might find this to be what you are looking for. If you are looking for actual Mysteries, I cannot recommend it.

2 people found this helpful

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Best American Mystery Stories Paperback – 2 October 2012

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