The Best American Mystery Stories 2020

Introduction

Several years ago I published a collection of my short stories (including a couple of new ones) under the title Shots Fired: Tales from Joe Pickett Country. Although I knew my editor wasn’t wild about the idea and a majority of regular readers would prefer a new Joe Pickett or Cassie Dewell novel, the collection did well and I’m quite proud of it. When I want to gift a book to someone who isn’t familiar with my work, I give that person Shots Fired.

What did surprise me (and, to be honest, disappoint me as well) were the number of folks I met along the trail who said things like “Sorry — ​I don’t read short stories,” or, worse, “I hate short stories. I prefer the real thing.” The real thing, of course, meaning full-length novels.

I tried to gently persuade the former commenters to give them a try. Short stories done well, I told them, can pack a punch like no other form of writing. A few of the people agreed to give them a read.

As for the “I hate short stories” people, I shot them on the spot and stepped over their bodies (after a final double tap) to engage with more pleasant people. Of course, this is a lie.

For years now, the brilliant and legendary Otto Penzler has devoted thousands of hours of his time to studiously reading short mystery stories that appeared the year before in anthologies, collections, and specialty publications. Of those he read last year, he winnowed them down to his fifty favorites and then sent them to me. Having had the real pleasure of reading those works, I think he got it exactly right, and selecting the final twenty was no easy task.

For over a century in America, short stories were a staple of both literary and mainstream magazines and periodicals. Great and popular short story writers were well known and valued, as they should have been. I think that’s one reason why this country has such a long tradition of excellent short stories and short story authors.

But things changed. Just try to find a short story in a popular magazine today.

Nevertheless, Otto has kept the flame alight.

And it’s an honor for me to have been asked to write this introduction.

I remember when I found out that a short story of mine had been selected to appear in the 2017 volume of this series. The story was called “Power Wagon,” and the anthology was edited by John Sandford. I was absolutely — ​and maybe disproportionately — ​thrilled. It’s a badge of honor as well as a validation that’s hard to put into words. I would venture to say that the authors included here will feel the same way.

I’ll confess right here that crafting a good short story is much harder than writing a full-length novel. Not all of the short stories I’ve written are the same quality, damn it. The length and breadth of novels leaves you room to adjust, to fill in, to take a couple of side trips, and all is forgiven in the end. It’s the difference between stringing a series of dissimilar pearls on a string and calling it a necklace and being the oyster who creates a single perfect pearl. This volume contains twenty perfect pearls.

It’s strange how the whims of popular culture go. Albums used to be the thing for music lovers. Now it’s hit singles. These stories are hit singles, literary version.

Take, for example, John Sandford’s brilliant little gem “Girl with an Ax.” How can anyone who loves the genre not want to read that? It begins: “The girl with the ax got off the bus at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Gower Street and started walking the superheated eleven blocks down Gower to Waring Avenue, where she lived by herself in a four-hundred-square-foot bungalow with an air conditioner designed and manufactured by cretins.” I love everything about that opening, and it only gets better from there. It’s a wonderful story that can only be described as “Sandfordian.”

I made notes and bullet points next to some of the selections so I’d remember which ones to read a second time later. On a few of the stories, I underlined sentences I wish I’d written.

An unscientific smattering of notes includes:

• “On Little Terry Road” by Tom Franklin: “...the room so cold he could see the captions of his breath.” The story itself: Desperate. Very, very dark.

• “Security” by Jeffery Deaver: A political hit job like no other, ever.

• “Nightbound” by Wallace Stroby: Breathless, action-packed, great sense of place.

• “Home Movie” by Jerry M. Burger: An entire life in five reels of 8mm film.

• “Deportees” by the master James Lee Burke: Evocative, haunting. “She was a beautiful woman and had a regal manner, but she was also crazy and had undergone electroshock treatments and had been placed in the asylum in Wichita Falls.”

• “See Humble and Die” by Richard Helms: “She looked like someone had wrapped a refrigerator.”

• “Pretzel Logic” by dbschlosser: Clipped, severed, sharp dialogue. A terrific scheme.

• “Second Cousins” by Michael Cebula: Noirish, featuring a woman named Toola. Cool twist ending. I cannot not read a story with a character named Toola.

• “Shanty Falls” by Doug Crandell: Dark and mesmerizing. Haunting.

• “Rhonda and Clyde” by John M. Floyd: With a setting in my home state of Wyoming, this is a mini-symphony of misdirection.

And those are just a few of the notes I made on the selections here. The rest are just as tantalizing.

Since you’re reading this introduction and holding this book in your hands, it means you don’t hate short stories. Good for you. It means you can live. It also means you have a special appreciation for this form. For that reason, I can safely say that authors, editors, and fellow short story readers hoist a toast in your honor.

Thank you.

C. J. Box