The Best American Mystery Stories 2008 - Softcover

Penzler, Otto; Pelecanos, George

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0618812679 ISBN 13: 9780618812677

Publisher: Mariner Books, 2008

Synopsis

“A must-read for anyone who cares about crime stories.”—Booklist

The award-winning author and Emmy-nominated television writer George Pelecanos serves as editor of the twelfth installment of this genre-expanding anthology, featuring twenty of the past year’s most enthralling, suspenseful, and slyly illuminating mystery stories.

A cut-and-dried case for a wily crime-scene reconstructionist is turned on its head in Michael Connelly’s “Mulholland Dive.” A terrible secret shared between two childhood friends resurfaces decades later as one of them lies on her deathbed in Alice Munro’s masterful “Child’s Play.” James Lee Burke tells the haunting tale of a Hurricane Katrina evacuee who unexpectedly finds comfort from an unimaginable loss in “Mist.” And in Holly Goddard Jones’s “Proof of God,” a young man’s car is repeatedly vandalized as proof that someone knows about the truths he’d never willingly reveal.
As Pelecanos notes in his introduction, the twenty “original and unique voices” in this collection pay homage to the genre’s forebears by taking crime fiction into a thrilling new direction. “But make no mistake,” he says, “we are all standing on the shoulders of writers who came before us and left an indelible mark on literature through craftsmanship, care, and the desire to leave something of worth behind.”

About this title

About the Author

OTTO PENZLER is a renowned mystery editor, publisher, columnist, and owner of New York’s The Mysterious Bookshop, the oldest and largest bookstore solely dedicated to mystery fiction. He has edited more than fifty crime-fiction anthologies. He lives in New York.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The top-notch 12th entry in this best of series offers superb writing from authors both well and little known. The nature of the 20 selections again lends support to those who think the series should be more accurately titled The Best American Crime Stories. As Pelecanos notes in the introduction, none of these stories are puzzles, locked-room mysteries, or private detective tales. Some of the best have only an incidental connection to crime, as in the chance encounter with a robber in a hospital that triggers the decline of an elderly couple in a small New England town in Elizabeth Strout's A Different Road. Likewise, Joyce Carol Oates's The Blind Man's Sighted Daughters focuses on the sacrifices made by an adult daughter caring for her aged father. Alice Munro's chilling Child's Play is another standout, with its casual but depressing depiction of the brutality children are capable of. Few will dispute Pelecanos's contention that several stories in the anthology would qualify for The Best American Short Stories from the same publisher. (Oct.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0618812679
• ISBN 13: 9780618812677
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448