The Best American Mystery Stories 2019

August 15, 2019
This year's look at what Penzler calls the "extremes of human behavior caused by despair, hate, greed, fear, envy, insanity, or love--sometimes in combination." Although their behavior may be extreme, most of the stories' characters are pretty ordinary folk. A museum worker forms an attachment to a prisoner in Rebecca McKanna's "Interpreting American Gothic." Teachers behave badly in Joyce Carol Oates' "The Archivist" and Robert Hinderliter's "Coach O." A real estate agent has evil intentions in Mark Mayer's "The Clown." A dog walker learns the consequences of punching above his weight in Suzanne Proulx's "If You Say So." One runaway bride flees to Ireland in Anne Therese Macdonald's "That Donnelly Crowd," and a second is shaken by finding an abducted child in Amanda Rea's "Faint of Heart." Family conflict remains popular. A father and daughter learn the consequences of spending custodial visits pretending to be home buyers in Reed Johnson's "Open House." A divorced mother struggles to control her teenage daughter in Jennifer McMahon's "Hannah-Beast." A family of Europeans has a bad habit of drowning in Sharon Hunt's "The Keeper of All Sins." A black-sheep uncle attempts to console his grieving nephew in Brian Panowich's "A Box of Hope." And a widow tries to save her family from an invading army in Ron Rash's "Neighbors." No cops (one ex-cop haunts the subway in Arthur Klepchukov's "A Damn Fine Town"), one robber (the hero of Robb T. White's "Inside Man"). Leaning more on Freud than Conan Doyle, Lethem's 20 selections highlight the angst of the everyday. A bonanza for fans of psychological suspense but a dud for devotees of detection.

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August 26, 2019
Guest editor Lethem infuses much-needed variety into the 23rd volume in Penzler’s annual best-of series. Rebecca McKanna’s marvelous “Interpreting American Gothic” finds an unlikely correspondence between a death row inmate and an art museum employee, who is transformed by the experience. In Amanda Rea’s haunting “Faint of Heart,” a carefully honed piece of perfection, two children are led from their backyard into a forest by an 15-year-old boy, who attempts to hang them with a homemade noose. For Nora, who finds one of the missing children, the ramifications of witnessing the trauma echo throughout her life. Tonya D. Price’s riveting “Payback” begins with a dog being chased down a country road by the reckless driver of a sports car; an act of reprisal from the narrator sets off a breathless chain of events demonstrating the extremes of human behavior. The anthology also features reliably strong stories from Joyce Carol Oates, Ron Rash, and Duane Swierczynski. Lethem’s wide-ranging sensibilities will be a welcome palate cleanse for fans clamoring for something different. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber Assoc.

September 13, 2019

Compiled by guest editor Lethem (The Feral Detective), this latest installment of the "Best American" series again lives up to its title. Penzler (Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection) states in his introduction that "the psychology of crime has become the dominant form of mystery fiction in recent years" and the works in this 23rd volume exemplify that trend. These stories are more "whydunit?" than the traditional "whodunit?" and all the more chilling for it. Several entries, notably Jennifer McMahon's "Hannah-Beast," Mark Mayer's "The Clown," and Robert Hinderliter's "Coach O," provide glimpses into the psyches of murderers as they fall over the edge between dreaming and doing. With the exception of the Civil War-set "Neighbors" by Ron Rash, the selections focus on the dark underbelly of the late 20th and early 21st century. All feature American protagonists, but the exceptional "Walk-In" by Harley Jane Kozak centers on an American in London faced with an assassin using Sherlock Holmes's techniques as well as subterfuge and poison to get the job done. Pieces by perennial favorites including Anne Therese Macdonald, Suzanne Proulx, Duane Swierczynski, Ted White, and Joyce Carol Oates round out the collection.

VERDICT Recommended for readers of psychological mysteries and thrillers as well as genre aficionados seeking the standout stories of the year.--Marlene Harris, Reading Reality, LLC, Duluth, GA

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2019
Guest-editor Lethem's novels, even those starring detectives, skew more toward literary fiction than mainstream crime, so it's no surprise that his selections for this edition of series editor Otto Penzler's long-running anthology would share that bent. Lethem comments in his introduction on the expanding boundaries of crime fiction, noting "how vital and diverse and happily contradictory the variations within a so-called genre can be." All of that vitality is on view in this unusual but thoroughly satisfying collection, which brings together a host of writers, domestic and international, who are likely to be new voices for many mystery devotees. Among the highlights are Anne Therese Macdonald's "That Donnelly Crowd," about an American woman hitchiking in Ireland during the Troubles, and Suzanne Proulx's "If You Say So," which builds tension exquisitely as it follows a naive 21-year-old photographer smitten with a woman he meets in Central Park who asks him to photograph her. On the more traditional side, Robb T. White's classic noir, "Inside Man," makes abundantly clear why a heist at the Mall of America is a bad idea. As always, an essential anthology.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)