The Best American Mystery Stories 2014

Foreword

THE WORDS subjective and subjectivity are extremely useful. What they describe is like the blood in the veins of an editor who is forced to reject a book or story. There is an inherent insult implicit in rejection. The editor is essentially saying, Your work isn’t good enough; it doesn’t measure up. What a dreadful thing to hear! After months, or even years, of slaving over a manuscript-rewriting again and again, arriving at le mot juste after trying a dozen other words, even desperately resorting to a thesaurus, editing line by line, fine-tuning (comma? or semicolon?)-and finally being convinced that it is as good as it is ever going to be, you are so proud of it that you are willing to send it out to the world. To hear that it’s being rejected is brutally painful.

A diplomatic editor can help lessen the blow by employing the word subjective. “I have no doubt that plenty of editors will feel differently about it, because of course all taste is subjective.” “I’m sorry, but it’s just not my kind of book-but I’m sure you understand that editorial decisions are always subjective.” And so on. These aren’t lies. Well, not always. There are times when the complete sentence might well be “It’s just not my kind of book… because I like books that have a modicum of originality and that haven’t been scrawled with a crayon, like this one.”

As I read stories for this distinguished anthology series, I am reminded of this notion of subjectivity, because so many different kinds of stories fall into the broad category of mystery and I don’t want to be overly exclusionary, selecting only a single type of story that will keep the scope of the book too narrow. Like you, and like most people, I have subjective preferences for certain styles, subjects, characters, and plot elements of fiction, to which I naturally gravitate. My taste tends to run to darker, tougher stories (probably as a counterweight to my generally happy, sunny, optimistic personality). I have never found myself enthralled by the exploits of cats or other household pets as they use their extraordinary brainpower and intuitive sense to help their somewhat dim owners solve complicated crimes, though these tales aren’t much worse than books in which the police are portrayed as such dunderheads that crimes need to be solved for them by florists, hairdressers, cooks, fashion designers, gardeners, Realtors, or booksellers.

Mystery is a very broad genre that includes any story in which a crime (usually murder) or the threat of a crime (creating suspense) is central to the plot or theme. Detective stories are one subgenre, others being crime (often told from the point of view of the criminal), suspense (impending manmade calamity), espionage (crimes against the state, which potentially have more victims than a single murder), and such sub-subgenres as police procedurals, historicals, humor, puzzles, private eyes, noir, etc. I love good stories in all these forms and others.

This series of anthologies tends to be more balanced than my own range of preference by virtue of several factors. First, my colleague on every book in the series has been and will remain forever (please, Lord) Michele Slung, who does the initial reading. She examines and reads (at least partially) somewhere in the neighborhood of three thousand to five thousand stories a year, culling the nonmysteries and the truly dreadful (of which there are more than you might imagine in your darkest nightmare). She then sends me stacks of stories she feels are eligible, from which I select the fifty of which I am most fond. Her taste is more catholic than mine, and her taste is impeccable, so I am exposed to a wider range of fiction than I might normally choose to read.

The second factor is the taste of the guest editor. It is almost impossible to think that two people who read a great deal will have exactly the same taste, and that certainly has proven to be the case with all the authors who have agreed to be guest editors for this series. To be fair, however, some stories are so obviously brilliant that it would be unthinkable for anyone to fail to appreciate them. So yes, subjectivity is significant, but sometimes an accomplished writer will have the stars align so that he or she produces work that is so transcendently exquisite that argument would be either futile or puerile.

Laura Lippman, the guest editor for this volume, frequently has been on regional and national bestseller lists, both for her outstanding Tess Monaghan series and for her suspenseful stand-alone novels. She has been nominated for seven Edgar Allan Poe Awards, winning for Charm City. Although on a tight deadline for the delivery of her next novel, she still somehow made the time to read all fifty stories that I submitted to her and come up with a wonderful final list. As the series editor, I get to play my own game and select my own choices-a list not shared with anyone. I bring it up because I’ve raised the issue of subjectivity as well as the notion that some stories defy argument. Seventeen of the stories in this book were also on my list of the top twenty of the year. Of course, I am utterly flabbergasted that Laura didn’t pick my other top three, but I concede that this is how we know subjectivity exists, and I have nothing at all against the three outliers.

It should go without needing to be mentioned that I’m grateful to Laura for the tremendous amount of time, energy, and thought she put into the role of guest editor, just as I am to the authors who took on the same task in the past, without whom these very distinguished collections would not be as excellent as they are (and that’s not just my subjective opinion; the reviews have been nothing short of astounding ever since the first anthology was released, in 1998). My deepest gratitude continues to resonate for Lisa Scottoline, Robert Crais, Harlan Coben, Lee Child, Jeffery Deaver, George Pelecanos, Carl Hiaasen, Scott Turow, Joyce Carol Oates, Nelson DeMille, Michael Connelly, James Ellroy, Lawrence Block, Donald E. Westlake, Ed McBain, Sue Grafton, and Robert B. Parker.

There can be little as troubling as learning that I missed a great story that deserved to be in The Best American Mystery Stories of the year. It’s happened twice that I know about. Once the story was in an author’s collection that had been sent to me but never got to my desk; I learned of it almost a year later. Another story was in a literary journal that wasn’t familiar to me (I can guarantee you that I know it now and it is read carefully). As a result, I engage in a nearly obsessive quest to locate and read every mystery/crime/suspense story published, living in eye-bulging fear that I will miss another worthy story. Therefore, if you are an author, editor, or publisher, or care about one, please feel free to submit a story for next year’s anthology and send a book, magazine, or tearsheet to me c/o The Mysterious Bookshop, 58 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. If the story first appeared electronically, you must submit a hard copy. It is vital to include the author’s contact information. No unpublished material will be considered, for what should be obvious reasons. No material will be returned. If you distrust the postal service, enclose a self-addressed, stamped postcard and I’ll reassure you that it arrived and will be read.

To be eligible, a story must have been written by an American or Canadian author and first published in an American or Canadian publication in the calendar year 2014. The earlier in the year I receive the story, the more fondly I regard it. Some knuckleheads (no offense) wait until Christmas week to submit a story published the previous spring (this happens every year), causing my blood pressure to reach dangerous levels. I wind up reading a stack of stories while everyone else seems to be partying, shopping, and otherwise celebrating the holiday season. It had better be an extraordinarily good story if you do this, because I will start reading it with barely contained outrage. Since there is necessarily a very tight production schedule for this book, the absolute firm deadline for a story to reach me is December 31. This is not arbitrary or arrogant but a product of time constraints. If the story arrives twenty-four hours later, it will not be read. Seriously.

O.P.