The Best American Mystery Stories 1998

Foreword

For just how many years have we heard the publishing axiom that short story collections don’t sell? When I was too young, too naive, to know this truth, I filled shelf after shelf with short story collections, unaware of my deviant behavior for engaging in this apparently unusual, if not outright bizarre, act.

Having continued down this awkwardly antisocial path for more years than it would be polite for anyone to enumerate to me, I am now struck by the fact that I have never had difficulty finding enough excellent collections (the work of a single author) and even more anthologies (stories by a variety of contributors) to satisfy my unending thirst. Can there be such generosity, such out-and-out charity, on the part of publishing houses to continue to publish these money-losing projects? If we are reading the same newspapers and magazines, with their endless lamentations about the strangulation of publishing houses by their new leaders, all accountants and lawyers still awaiting their first actual reading experience, that seems unlikely. Or — could it be? — short stories do sell.

When I consider the number of periodicals, anthologies, and collections I read to accumulate the best stories of the year, I cannot help but be cheered by the many markets open to short story writers. Nothing like the golden age before television, of course, but enough to ensure that any worthwhile piece of fiction will find a home.

While there are too few magazines specializing exclusively in the type of fiction contained in this volume, there are many mainstream consumer publications that use some mystery fiction, just as there are many small literary magazines that might be a trifle too blue-blooded ever to consider a mere mystery story but are happy to feature a tale of passion, fear, violence, suspense, or revenge that results in murder or its attempt or its aftermath. Finally, recent years have seen a dramatic increase in anthologies of original mystery fiction. Adding it all up, we counted nearly six hundred mystery-crime-suspense stories published in the calendar year 1997.

It has always been my practice to define mystery fiction broadly as any story in which a crime, or the threat of a crime, is central to the theme or plot. This definition opens the door to much that is not structured as a classic detective story.

In the United States, the professional organization of authors who produce this type of fiction is called the Mystery Writers of America. Its English counterpart is the Crime Writers Association. The members of both organizations are writers of mysteries, or stories essentially told from the point of view of the detective in which an attempt is made to discover who committed a crime or, more often nowadays, why the crime was committed. Both also count among their members writers of crime fiction, which is largely told from the point of view of the criminal: we see the crime committed, generally understand why it has been done, and then wait to discover how or why it all unravels.

As Sue Grafton points out in her introduction, there seems to be a preponderance of crime stories in this volume. It has, it seems to me, become more and more difficult for detective story writers to find new motives, or new clues, with which to fool readers. Agatha Christie consumed more than her share of original plot notions, leaving a pretty skimpy carcass for those who followed. On the whole, there seems a wider range of opportunity in the areas of suspense and crime than in the tightly plotted story of observation and deduction, so it cannot be a surprise that the output of contemporary authors reflects that shift of direction.

As is the custom in the Houghton Mifflin series of distinguished anthologies, the series editor (in this case, me) does the preliminary reading and passes along the best fifty stories to the guest editor (in this case, Sue Grafton), who selects the twenty stories to be published, with the remaining thirty listed in an honor roll at the end of the volume. To further enhance the reading experience, each author is invited to provide notes about his or her story and its genesis or other pertinent anecdotal material.

Happily, The Best American Mystery Stories enjoyed success with its initial volume in 1997 and gives the appearance of a series that will have a nice long run. It would be a shame to miss any eligible stories, so if you are an American or Canadian author of a mystery story published for the first time in the calendar year 1998, or if you have read one in a source that I am unlikely to have discovered, I would be happy to hear of it. Please write to Otto Penzler, Mysterious Bookshop, 129 West 56th St., New York, N.Y 10019.

O. P.