The Best American Mystery Stories 2007

Foreword

A question frequently asked of me by mystery writers is where to submit their short stories. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, celebrating more than sixty-five years of continuous publication, with no plans to retire, is always the immediate first thought, followed by its sister publication, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, which is nearly as geriatric. Unhappily, I have then used up my entire store of knowledge and advice. Fewer and fewer short fiction works appear in general magazines. Such women’s magazines as Redbook (which first published Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man, among much else), Good Housekeeping, and Ladies’ Home Journal proudly ran stories in every issue, as did such men’s magazines as Argosy, Esquire, Stag, Gentlemen’s Quarterly, and Playboy (and some men actually did read the stories, contrary to commonly held belief) Now, if they still exist, publication of fiction in magazines like these is as rare as a conservative defense lawyer.

There were other mystery magazines, too, in the 1950s, ’60s, and even into the ’70s: Manhunt (in which stories by Ross Macdonald, Mickey Spillane, and Ed McBain first appeared). The Saint Mystery Magazine, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and eponymous digest-sized magazines by Rex Stout, Ed McBain, Mike Shayne, Edgar Wallace, and John Creasey (the latter two published in England).

A little earlier, there were such high-paying and prestigious general interest magazines as the Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Scribner’s, and Cosmopolitan (before it changed its target readership to primarily women). There were, too, the famous pulp magazines, filled almost exclusively with fiction, which had a life from around 1915 until the early 1950s. At one time, as many as 500 different titles were published per month. While television frequently is blamed for the demise of the pulps, indeed of most magazine fiction, it was mostly the creation and proliferation of mass market paperback books that killed their more cumbersome relations.

The New Yorker still publishes quality fiction, and several others still throw a small bone to fiction writers by offering a single story per month. Beyond that, I am at a loss as to what to say to writers who want or need to earn a living with short stories. Thank heaven for the literary journals that publish thousands of stories a year, hut they only provide nourishment for the soul, unable to pay more than a few dollars and a few copies of the magazine for a work on which a serious writer may have labored for a month or more. And this is princely compared with electronic magazines, which pay for work with a hearty “Thank you.” The last remaining option for a short story writer is one of the many anthologies published each year, though most of the contributors tend to he established authors who are commissioned to write for the book.

For mystery writers specifically, obstacles to getting published are more numerous than for those who work in a less genre-specific form. The New Yorker frowns on genre fiction. Playboy in recent years has eschewed it altogether, and many literary journals are reluctant to admit that they publish it at all, though they have been the source for some of the best crime fiction in the history of this series.

A high percentage of the stories in recent entries in The Best American Mystery Stories have been, not surprisingly, from literary journals and other anthologies, with a generous sprinkling most years from EQMM and AHMM. I hear the hopeful and happy rumor that Black Mask Magazine may he revived, which would provide a new market mainly for hard-boiled writers, but knowing what a difficult battle a pure fiction magazine would face, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Having pointed out how hard it is to find a venue for short mystery stories, I will confess that, as in prior years, more than fifteen hundred mystery stories published in the 2006 calendar year were examined in order to identify the fifty that seemed most worthy of being considered for inclusion in this series by this year’s guest editor, Carl Hiaasen, whose job it was to select the top twenty.

As is true every year, I could not have perused those fifteen hundred stories on my own, much of the heavy lifting being done by my invaluable colleague Michele Slung, who is able to read, evaluate, and commit to seemingly lifelong memory a staggering percentage of these stories, culling those that clearly do not belong on a short list — or a long one either, for that matter. She also examines twice as many stories as that to determine if they have mystery or criminal content, frequently impossible to know merely by reading the title. The same standards pertain to every one of the volumes in this prestigious series. The best writing makes it into the book. Fame, friendship, original venue, reputation, subject — none of it matters. It isn’t only the qualification of being the best writer that will earn a spot in the table of contents; it also must be the best story.

While it is redundant for me to say it again, since I have already done so in each of the previous ten volumes of this series, it falls into the category of fair warning to state that many people regard a mystery as a detective story. I regard the detective story as one sub-genre of a much bigger category, which I define as any short work of fiction in which a crime, or the threat of a crime, is central to the theme or the plot. While I love good puzzles and tales of pure ratiocination, few of these are written today, as the mystery genre has evolved (for better or worse, depending on your point of view) into a more character-driven form of literature, with more emphasis on the “why” of a crime’s commission than on “who” or “how.” The line between mystery fiction and general fiction has become increasingly blurred in recent years, producing fewer memorable detective stories but more significant literature.

It is a pleasure, as well as a necessity, to thank Carl Hiaasen for agreeing to be the guest editor for the 2007 edition of The Best American Mystery Stories. A regular presence on the bestseller list and one of the funniest writers who ever lived, he put aside virtually everything on his very crowded plate to deliver the work on schedule, thereby allowing a sigh of relief to emanate from the lips of one and all at Houghton Mifflin. And sincere thanks as well to the previous guest editors, beginning with Robert B. Parker, who started it all in 1997, followed by Sue Grafton, Ed McBain, Donald E. Westlake. Lawrence Block. James Ellroy, Michael Connelly, Nelson DeMille, Joyce Carol Oates, and Scott Turow.

While I engage in a relentless quest to locate and read every mystery/crime/suspense story published, I live in terror that I will miss a worthy story, so if you are an author, editor, or publisher, or care about one, please feel free to send a book, magazine, or tear sheet to me c/o The Mysterious Bookshop, 58 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. If it first appeared electronically, you must submit a hard copy. It is vital to include the author’s contact information. No unpublished material will he considered for what should be obvious reasons. No material will he returned. If you distrust the postal service, enclose a self-addressed, stamped postcard.

To be eligible for the 2008 edition, a story must have been written by an American or a Canadian, and it must first have been published in an American or Canadian publication in the calendar year 2007. The earlier in the year I receive the story, the more fondly I regard it. For reasons known only to the nitwits who wait until Christmas week to submit a story published the previous spring, this happens every year, causing much gnashing of teeth while I read a stack of stories as my wife and friends are trimming the Christmas tree or otherwise celebrating the holiday season. It had better be a damned good story if you do this. Because of the very tight production schedule for this book, the absolute firm deadline is December 31. If the story arrives two days later, it will not be read. Sorry.

O.P.