 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
- Mystery - |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
T he Best American Mystery Stories of the CenturyEdited by Tony Hillerman and Otto Penzler Houghton Mifflin Company 864 pages, 2000 ISBN 0618012672 Reviewed by Nancy Mehl Tucked between A Retrieved Reformation by O. Henry and Running Out of Dog by Dennis Lehane are short stories you would expect in this anthology, as well as stories penned by authors that may surprise you. Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Damon Runyon, O. Henry, Joyce Carole Oates, Ring Lardner, and James Thurber are names that are not usually associated with mystery, while Dashiell Hammet, Harry Kemelman, Ellery Queen, John D. MacDonald, Ross Macdonald, Stephen King, Sue Grafton and Donald Westlake are certainly not a surprise. Otto Penzler, who owns the Mysterious Book shops in New York and Los Angeles, and award winning author Tony Hillerman, have selected the top mystery stories of the century, compiled into an anthology that will be a favorite among mystery lovers. Selections were made from sources such as Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Esquire, Collier’s and the New Yorker. Narrowing it down to fifty-five of the best was no easy task. Penzler writes, "Reducing the list of distinguished stories from several thousand to a few hundred required a good deal of rereading and weeding. Getting that list down to a manageable number from which Tony Hillerman made the final selection was like self-surgery. Each story eliminated after a certain point was like another incision, one painfully deeper than another." Every story is a gem. Included are Jacques Futrelle's The Problem of Cell 13, Fredrick Irving Anderson’s Blind Man’s Bluff, Susan Glaspell's A Jury of Her Peers, Hemingway's The Killers, Pearl S. Buck’s Ransom, Thurber's The Catbird Seat, Harry Kemelman's The Nine Mile Walk, Donald Westlake's Too Many Crooks, Stephen King’s Quitter’s Inc, James Crumley's Hot Springs, Michael Malone’s Red Clay, Dennis Lehane’s Running Out of Dog, and Tom Franklin's eerie and disturbing The Poachers. Noting the change in writing styles from the early 1900’s to the present is quite a treat in itself. Early writers of mystery stories followed the trail blazed by English writers who were, for the most part, copying the writing style of Edgar Allan Poe. This changing of the "mysterious voice" is clearly seen as the stories move up through the years. From the cozy, to the hard-edged detective story, to the more contemporary character driven plot, and the classic "puzzle" tale, there is something here for everyone. For those of us who love the mystery short story, there can be no better anthology. The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century is a must read, but don’t rush through it. One story a day will keep the blahs away. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||