The Year's Best Mystery and Suspense Stories 1993 (Year's Best Mystery & Suspense Stories) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802732380 ISBN 13: 9780802732385

Publisher: Walker & Co, 1993

Synopsis

An annual anthology of outstanding mystery and suspense short fiction encompasses works by Ruth Rendell, Donald E. Westlake, Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Lovesey, Benjamin M. Schutz, Max Allan Collins, and other notable masters of the genre.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

An unusually generous edition of Hoch's venerable anthology, including 14 stories, 8 of them new to hardcover. Best are two longish tales: ``The Model,'' Joyce Carol Oates's haunting account of a teenaged orphan pressed into modeling for a mysterious patron, and ``Candles in the Rain,'' Doug Allyn's story of skullduggery at an abandoned airbase about to be ceded to the local Ojibwa reservation. Standouts among shorter takes include Ed Gorman's grim portrait of a dedicated social worker; Susan B. Kelly's flip anecdote about a shamus too successful for her own good; and Benjamin Schutz's Edgar-winning account of p.i. Leo Haggerty's attempt to break up an impending marriage. Max Allan Collins, Ruth Rendell, and Donald Westlake present stories of rocky marriages--Rendell's a semi-successful novelty, Collins's and Westlake's more predictable. The gathering is rounded out by Jo Bannister, Jacklyn Butler, Peter Lovesey, Nancy Pickard, Steven Saylor, and editor Hoch, who also contributes his essential bibliography and lists of awards and deaths. Not an outstanding crop, but few of the entries will disappoint. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

This nicely balanced collection of top-notch crime stories is culled from magazines and anthologies published last year. Stylistically, the stories range from Jo Bannister's cutely ironic short-short, "The Poisoned Chalice," to the darkly literate menace that pervades Joyce Carol Oates's quietly shocking "The Model." In "The Man Who was the God of Love," Ruth Rendell brings a husband down from his self-constructed pedestal when his intellectual prowess is called into question; Peter Lovesey has a wife confront the fear that her husband is England's newest serial killer in "You May See a Stranger;" and Nancy Pickard speculates on the consequences when a no-good ex-boyfriend's death is allowed to reactivate a long-forgottten love in the aptly titled "Sex and Violence." Other tales feature the proven talents of Donald Westlake, Max Allan Collins and Ed Gorman. Hoch helpfully includes honor rolls, a list of award winners and a necrology in several appendixes.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Walker & Co
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0802732380
• ISBN 13: 9780802732385
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Editor: Hoch Edward D.