The Best American Mystery Stories 1999

Foreword

Now that Best American Mystery Stories has its third annual volume, two elements have accrued that were impossible when we were just starting up. Like so many sets of circumstances, they are undeniably linked yet totally disparate.

The first is that the books have enjoyed delightful success (for which I, my publisher, and the contributors sincerely thank you). Weeks on local best-seller lists and on the national best-seller compilations of Ingram, America’s largest book wholesaler, bring a flush of gratitude and excitement that is unlike most other human experience. If anything of a similar nature has occurred in your life, you know precisely what I mean. If it hasn’t (and I truly hope it does), trust me, it brightens your life.

“Did we make the list?”

“Yes, we’re number five.”

“YESSS!”

Indelibly connected with such euphoric moments, and patently a vital part of them, is the review attention from magazines and newspapers. When someone calls and says, “Did you see the review in whatever-publication-that-I-haven’t-ever-read-before-in-my-life-but that-is-now-my-absolute-favorite-publication-in-all-the-land?” I say, “No-but-would-you-read-it-to-me-please-but-first-tell-me-is-it-good-or-bad?” in about a tenth of a second, each syllable running into the next so utterly that I’m certain the entire sentence is incomprehensible gibberish (of which I have been accused even when enunciating impeccably, I’ll concede, but that’s not really the point).

While these moments do not occur often enough (three times a day, every day for, say, six months would be about right), what they lack in frequency is made up in the pure toe-curling elation of having good words in the air, filling the room as if with the “Hallelujah” Chorus.

Perhaps wrongly, I have a very proprietary feeling for this series of books. I live with each book for a full year, reading hundreds of stories and skimming hundreds of others. It’s easy with the mystery anthologies and magazines, and the stories personally submitted by authors, editors, publishers, and good souls who just want to make sure something worthwhile isn’t missed. Then, I’m pretty sure there’s a mystery story in my hands. But many small literary magazines don’t send subscriptions or tearsheets, and neither do many of the larger consumer magazines, so all the stories between their covers need to be scanned to see if they are appropriate for consideration for this book.

Full disclosure. I have a friend and colleague, Michele Slung, the world’s fastest and smartest reader, whose help in the above process is invaluable. She can spend several ten- or twelve-hour days going through an entire year’s worth of The New Yorker, Harper’s, women’s magazines that carry fiction, and stacks of literary magazines and come back with five photocopied stories. “Here,” she’ll say, “these might qualify. Forget the rest.” What she can speed-read in one day would take me two weeks, which helps me to be confident that just about every mystery and crime story published in the United States or Canada is read during the course of the year. If a story doesn’t make it into this book, it is unlikely that it was overlooked.

Which brings me back to that proprietary sense. Knowing how thorough the process is for being considered for a place in one of the annual volumes in this series, I regard it as a serious honor to be short-listed, as it were. To make the cut onto the list of the top fifty stories of the year is not easy, and it may be even more difficult for the guest editor to select the top twenty from that group, all of which are good. It may be much like the feeling a good teacher has when she sends her class off after graduation and later learns that some of them have had great success in life. I care about these stories and their creators, and I want them to have success, so it is a joyful moment when it comes to them, whether as part of a good review or as a surprisingly active seller. That both these delightful events have come to pass fills me with gratifying avuncular pride.

In the first paragraph, I suggested that two entirely disparate sets of circumstances have come to pass as this series has been published. The second is a bit, shall we say, less fulfilling than the first. It is the relentless, if sometimes well-meaning, second-guessing of readers, critics, authors, and just about anyone who may pass in the street. “Why didn’t you pick X story? Why did you think this story by Y author was better than the other one? You call that a mystery story? Why did you have to pick such a dirty story? Such language! My favorite writer in the whole world is Z, and he wrote a dozen mysteries last year. Couldn’t you pick even one of them?”

None of these is an unfair question. The process of filling a book with what those of us who work on it regard as the best mystery fiction of the year is not an exact science. Informed reading remains somewhat subjective, no matter how hard one tries to be fair.

To pick a couple of authors who deserve to be named, Lawrence Block and Joyce Carol Oates each wrote three stories that could easily have been included in this volume. It wasn’t an easy choice to zero in on the ones that were selected. It wasn’t a whimsical decision. It wasn’t throwing darts at a board. These just appealed to me more, and clearly to the guest editor as well.

What I call a mystery story is not what everyone else would call a mystery story. This will be the third year in a row in which I define my terms, and I will probably continue to do so forever, because it is important. My definition of a mystery is a fictional work in which a crime, or the threat of a crime, is central to the plot or theme of the story. The Great Gatsby, in which a murder occurs, is not a mystery, as the entire story has unfolded before that event takes place. Crime and Punishment is a mystery because, without the crime, there is no book. All the stories in this book are mysteries by that definition. Detective stories, which many people use as their narrow definition of a mystery, are merely one subgenre of this literary form.

Many readers are offended by gutter language, descriptive sex, extreme violence, and other elements of some mystery stories in this and in the previous volumes of this series. It just can’t be helped. As an old-fashioned guy, I am often shocked, sometimes offended, by what I see on prime-time television, not to mention what appears in movies and in some literature. This is what is. It does not enter the equation when selecting stories. If you are a little nervous about such things, you can relax. Nothing in this book is any more graphic than the media accounts of President Clinton’s clandestine activities.

Being a popular writer does not necessarily make one a fine writer. Sometimes being a fine writer helps make one a popular writer. The single criterion for selecting the stories for this book, indeed for this series, is that they be well written. Detective story, crime story, suspense story. Makes no difference. By a huge best-selling author or by a first-time author in a small literary magazine. Makes no difference. Clean or dirty, long or short. Makes no difference. Good. That makes the difference.

Writers, editors, and publishers (or the people who love them) who would like to have their work considered for this series, please do feel encouraged to submit stories to me. Any fictional work published in the United States or Canada by an American or Canadian author is eligible. Provide a legible copy of the manuscript, tear sheets, or the entire publication. If the works appears in one of the standard mystery magazines, save the postage, as they are all read carefully. Nothing will be returned, even if you include a self-addressed stamped envelope. No critical remarks will be offered, so please don’t ask. No submissions via electronic mail will be considered. I do not own a computer (though there are several on the premises of my bookshop, I do not consider them mine) and do not know how to turn one on. My assistant is far too busy to print out stories for me. Please screen your submissions. You may, of course, submit as many as you like, but I get nervous when a dozen stories or more appear in an envelope. Gee, I wonder, do you suppose the author really believes they are all that good? Unpublished material is not eligible. Absolute final date for submissions is December 31. You can only imagine the warmth I feel for those who send their stories that were published in April to me during the week before Christmas. Submissions should be sent to Otto Penzler, The Mysterious Bookshop, 129 West 56th Street, New York, New York 10019.

I have been remiss in the past about failing to thank the guest editors in print. Robert B. Parker, Sue Grafton, and now Evan Hunter (Ed McBain) have taken a great deal of time from their very full lives to read a lot of stories, write thoughtful introductions, and even to help promote the books. Clearly, the series would have been diminished without their involvement. I am blessed to have them as colleagues, and even more to have them as friends.

O.P.