The Best American Mystery
Stories 2014
Edited
by Laura Lippman
Given
its
consistent
high quality, it's almost easy to forget just how good the stories in
the annual Best American volumes actually are, even when their
relative quality dips for a year or two. Though the 2014 iteration of
The Best
American Mystery Stories
has its fair share of disappointments, including a general sense of
unevenness and a potentially
poignant
absence of actual mystery stories, it does offer a solid selection of
excellent crime-centric fiction. The collection's most striking
feature, perhaps, is its aforementioned lack of procedurals and, with
them, tales that rely on the procurement and decoding of clues, red
herrings, and tidy solutions. Even the closest example, Nancy Pauline
Simpson's "Festered Wounds", is more of a period piece with
a gotcha
ending than a proper narrative of detection. Like the other stories
in this volume, it is concerned more with philosophical explorations
of the myriad causes and effects of crime and criminality than
with the particulars of a given event.
This
is not,
however, to say that these stories do not traffic in suspense,
twists, or other traditional
genre staples.
Joseph Heller's "Almost Like Christmas" and Patricia
Engel's "Aida" effectively establish and exquisitely
exploit dramatic tension with nearly every word; similarly, Jim
Allyn's "Princess Anne" provides a twist ending that is
surprising and inevitable in equal measure. Charlaine Harris's "Small
Kingdoms", a fun thriller with a wicked sense of ironic, dry
humor, may be the collection's most pleasant surprise, coming as it
does from an author associated heavily with quite another topic
indeed. Most of the contributors do pay tribute, however subtle or
unspoken, to the tropes and tricks of
more
traditional mysteries;
these allusions are rendered
in different shades of subtlety to varying degrees of success.
Likewise, the lofty literary ambitions that are on full display in
nearly every story are about as hit-and-miss as they are in less
genre-inclined environments. While some authors are able to harness
the raw power and indescribable beauty of a perfectly selected turn
of phrase, others spend too much time mired in a search for meaning
and theme and thus pay too little attention to the intricate details
of characterization and plot that ultimately determine the success or
failure of any given story- mystery or not. I often found myself
craving more action- a criticism that would absolutely
apply
if I were merely expecting good stories without any preconceived
expectations of content.
As
refreshing as it is to see an anthology that rewards authors for
exploring the literary possibilities of genre fiction, it may be a
bit of a stretch to present this collection as a group of excellent
mystery
stories; rather, it collects excellent stories that deal, however
tangentially, with crime. The distinction may seem trivial, but as
this series comes ever closer to its parent it may prove to be a
distinction well worth
considering. Nonetheless, it is encouraging to note that, though they
may not be the types of tales expected of such a volume, many of
these stories could easily go toe-to-toe with other fiction, in any
genre, for sheer quality; despite my qualms about the title's
(in)accuracy, the fact that the distinction between the best short
fiction and the best short mystery fiction grows increasingly
ambiguous every year is, to
my mind, a
positive development that
I hope to see resonate across other oft-maligned literary niches.
Insofar as it does contain a selection of stories that revolve around
crime and criminality, The
Best American Mystery Stories 2014
is a satisfying book, though it may not quite deliver on the promise
of its title in conventional ways.
Grade:
B+
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