The Best American Mystery Stories 2011

Introduction

I HATE THIS PART.

You should skip it. I'm serious. You know what this is, don't you? This is the part of a story collection where the editor writes some faux-deep, pseudo-erudite essay on the larger meaning of the short story. It is, quite frankly, an irrelevant exercise. The collection is about the story, not my view of it, and thus this introduction becomes the literary equivalent of a bad overture at a musical: It gets you in your seat, but if you're already seated, you just want the curtain to open. It stalls. It annoys. Even the best introductions, no matter how well done, are a bit like a toupee. It may be a good toupee. It may be a bad toupee. But it's still a toupee.

It is also pretty ironic when you think about it-an excess of words to introduce a form that relies on the economy of them. A novel is a long-term commitment. A short story is more like a heady fling-intense, adventurous, emotionally charged, and, when I was young, embarrassingly quick. Okay, forget that last one. The best short stories, like those high-octane lovers, never fully leave you. They burn, linger, haunt. Some sneak up on you in a subtle way. Others are like a punch in the gut-sudden, spontaneous. They knock the wind out of you.

One of my favorite rules of writing comes from the great Elmore Leonard: "Try to leave out the parts that readers tend to skip." If you learn nothing else from this introduction-as if you're really learning something-please make sure you keep this rule front and center in your thoughts. The best writers do. The best writers ask themselves on every page, every paragraph, every sentence, every word: "Is this compelling? Is this gripping? Is this absolutely necessary? Is this the best I can do?" (So, too, do the best readers, but that's for another time.)

That doesn't mean you can't have larger themes, descriptions, well-defined characters, or explore matters of great import. You can and you must. All great stories-long and, yes, short-contain those elements. You will, in fact, witness many examples in just a few turns of the page. Again, my job here is to delay that sense of satisfaction, I guess, by pointing out the obvious in wonderful, economic storytelling, so let us continue.

What Elmore Leonard means in the above quotation, of course, is that every word must count. The writers included in this collection are masters at this. In the pages after this intro, you will find no navel-gazing, no endless descriptions of winter weather or dithering on about worldview, no fashionable "look at me" acrobatic wordplay that amounts to nothing more than proving that someone bought a brand-new thesaurus and isn't afraid to abuse it.

What will you find, then? In two words: great storytelling.

The writers in this varied and brilliant collection-a heady blend of household names, veteran scribes, and promising newcomers-have taken Elmore Leonard's credo and fed it steroids and raised it to the tenth power and then driven it out to a dive bar by the airport and given it an unlimited tab. Yes, I know that makes no sense, but horrendous analogy aside, you're in for a treat.

Here, my good friend Otto Penzler and I have assembled the "best of the best" in mystery short stories. We often wax nostalgic about some past era, some now-gone golden age of-take your pick-music, literature, cinema, art. Let me give you the good news here. We-you and me, dear reader-are living in the golden age of crime fiction. I do not say this lightly. Never in history have so many authors "dunnit" with such variety and such skill.

In this collection you will find every sort of hero, every sort of villain, every sort of setting, every sort of crime, every sort of solution, every sort of surprise. To paraphrase the old saw, these stories will make you laugh, they will make you cry, they will make you cringe in fear, they will become a part of you.

All of which brings me back to Elmore Leonard's rule. Do you see something worth skipping? Cut it. Cut it off at the knees. Like, to give you an immediate example, this introduction. Cue the maniacal laughter. Fool. If you had skipped this part, you'd already be lost in one of the best mystery short stories of the year. Instead, alas, you're stuck with me.

But not for much longer. Turn the page, dear reader. These will be the last wasted words you will read in this collection. Go. Enjoy.

HARLAN COBEN