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Title: The Best American Mystery Stories 1998 by Sue Grafton, Otto Penzler ISBN: 0-395-83585-2 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 30 October, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.12 (8 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A nice read
Comment: Doing a review on an anthology is not easy since there are a multitude of stories written by several authors. This book comprises a collection of the best mystery stories of 1998. Sue Grafton was right in saying most of the stories are crime novels, which is precisely what they are. I was pleasantly surprised by two of the stories, CHILD SUPPORT by David Ballard and SECRETS by Janice Law.
In the first story, the author takes a simple child custody story as told by the point of view of the father. He then gets into an extraordinary circumstance that jeopardizes his relationship with his son. What makes this story interesting is that it is narrated by the ex-husband, leaving the reader with the preconceptions left by the storyteller. One must remember a lesson given to us by Agatha Christie in some of her books. It is never to take the narrator's story as face value. It is not till one reaches the end that one gets the rest of the story.
SECRETS was another delightful surprise. It is a revenge story several years in the making. Its main theme is the power of motherhood and the extremes that they will go in protecting their children.
Another interesting aspect of this book is a story by Stuart Kaminsky called FIND MIRIAM. It is an abbreviated version of his novel VENGEANCE. I assume he wrote the short story before he decided to make it a novel. It takes a genius to implement that same story in a novel and I think Kaminsky pulls it off.
Rating: 5
Summary: Always a Great Read
Comment: Although I can't say that I enjoyed every story, I can say that I enjoyed nearly all the stories, which is about as good as you can get with short story anthologies. A great collection of great mystery stories! I hope the series continues for quite a long time...I look forward to each new edition!!
Rating: 4
Summary: Very Solid!
Comment: Sue Grafton introduces this entertaining collection with an important disclaimer. The stories she's picked from mystery magazines and other sources as different as Playboy and the Kenyon Review aren't all quite mysteries in the classical sense. Rather, reflecting a change in the genre that series editor Otto Penzler notes in his Foreword, they're stories whose central feature is simply a crime or a criminal of one kind or another. And sometimes the criminality is handled in an "offbeat" way.
Dave Shaw's well-told "Twelve Days out of Traction" takes us into a petty criminal's mind with amusing results. His narrator runs an insurance scam where he stages falls and his fake lawyer friends write threatening letters that earn his little consortium good money. But it's painful work--as the title indicates--and sometimes he can get surprisingly upstaged. Lawrence Block's intriguing "Keller on the Spot" offers a different twist. Keller's a contract killer sent to Dallas to murder a millionaire, but he ironically ends up becoming involved in the man's life in ways he could never have expected.
David Ballard's tricky "Child Support" imagines the devilish depths to which battling spouses can sink when their marriage collapses. Helen Tucker's rather predictable "The Power of Suggestion" also explores the modern marriage battleground, drawing equally disturbing conclusions about marital happiness and what it drives people to. But Merrill Joan Gerber paints a much brighter picture of family life, one so rich and fulfilling that it inspires more than envy in "This is a Voice from Your Past."
Two standouts in which dogs play pivotal roles are Walter Mosley's simmering excerpt from Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned and Pat Jordan's ominous and richly-detailed gun-running tale, "Beyond Dog." Jordan's story is set in Florida, as is John Lutz's brooding "Night Crawlers" and together with Margaret Maron's deeply satisfying "Prayer for Judgment," this triad offers the collection's most absorbing use of atmosphere.
The stories in this anthology use American settings with three notable exceptions. Peter Robinson's evocative "The Two Ladies of Rose Cottage" is set in Yorkshire and surprisingly centers around Thomas Hardy. Taking place in today's London, Edward D. Hoch's quietly clever "The Old Spies Club" answers a question that has possessed international thriller writers in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse: where's the beef? Hoch finds his subject in imagining a Cold War-era secret about to escape, and the somewhat hapless attempts to keep that from happening. Best-selling thriller writer John Lescroart ably fills in a blank in the Sherlock Holmes canon, giving life to Watson's passing comment about a "missing story." His rousing "The Giant Rat of Sumatra" launches Holmes against his old nemesis Moriarity, who threatens the world with a very contemporary evil.
The biographical notes at the end of the book also include the authors' reports on the genesis of their stories, and in some cases, these little narratives are as captivating as the stories themselves--or more so...
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Title: Best American Mystery Stories by Ed McBain, Otto Penzler ISBN: 0395939151 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 29 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Best American Mystery Stories 2000 by Otto Penzler, Donald E. Westlake ISBN: 0395939186 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 26 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Best American Mystery Stories 2001 by Otto Penzler, Lawrence Block ISBN: 0618124918 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 10 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Best American Mystery Stories 2002 (Best American (TM)) by Otto Penzler, James Ellroy ISBN: 0618124934 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 15 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Best American Mystery Stories 2003 by Otto Penzler, Michael Connelly ISBN: 061832965X Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 10 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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