September 6, 2015

Book 43: The Best American Mystery Stories 2013

The Best American Mystery Stories 2013
Edited by Lisa Scottoline

One way or another, I've been reading a lot of mystery stories and thrillers recently. The Best American series generally provides a reliably interesting selection of short genre fiction, and the 2013 mystery iteration is no exception to the rule. With a mix of traditional procedurals and literary examinations of crime and its effects on individuals and communities (as well as stories that proudly straddle the lines that some would wish to place between these types of tales), this anthology stands up admirably among its predecessors and peers. Editors Lisa Scottoline and Otto Penzler have ensured that the group is balanced, despite the emergence of certain themes and styles. Many of the stories herein are tinged with regret and/or told in a mournful manner, yet no two authors take the same approach to these and other emotions, highlighting and illustrating the rich complexity of human feelings and experiences and the ways in which crime brings them to the forefront. After reading a large number of these volumes, I am always amazed to discover new takes on the common theme; this year, Kevin Leahy's "Remora, IL" was the biggest surprise. Excellently and appropriately told in the typically tricky first-person plural voice, the story examines the ways in which the arrival of a private prison affects the surrounding small town, tackling the effects of prison culture through a different lens than is usually offered.

Even the more traditional procedurals and whodunnits are unusually successful here, providing as they do a range of vivid settings, compelling characters, and pleasantly confounding solutions. Clark Howard's "The Street Ends at the Cemetery" is a delightful (and surprisingly funny) heist story that somehow manages to maintain its suspense despite the evident spoiler in the title; it's an all-around delight that, I suspect, would be just as entertaining when read a second or third time. Similarly rewarding are historically minded tales from Bill Pronzini and Eileen Dreyer. Pronzini's "Gunpowder Alley" is a locked-room mystery with thoroughly believable late-19th century atmospherics and a conclusion that, fittingly perhaps, can be guessed before the fictional sleuth makes the same deduction; suffering only slightly from some botched descriptions of the setting (so crucial to the subgenre), it is nonetheless a pleasant throwback in both style and content. Dreyer takes a slightly different approach in "The Sailor in the Picture", which revisits the iconic V-Day celebrations in Times Square with an alternate perspective of a sailor's homecoming with a surprisingly modern sensibility. The story offers its share of suspense and action before seemingly heading for a tidy conclusion, only for the coda to reveal an alternate, yet deliciously satisfying, perspective on the preceding events.

Other stories in contemporary settings illustrate the ever-increasing types of stories that fall under the mystery umbrella, and most of those in this collection do seem to fit the theme. Andre Kocsis displays his innate sense for proper pacing in "Crossing", a thriller about a Vietnam-era deserter who leads a group of mysterious foreigners across the British Columbia-Washington border. Expertly deploying elements of more traditional genre stories, such as false leads and half-hidden truths, as well as tense and occasionally violent interactions between its characters, as well as a patient buildup to a final illustration of the stakes in play, Kocsis shows that a bit of melodrama need not necessarily diminish the power of a good story and that strong characters can thrive within any fictional situation or genre. The quality of individual stories is incredibly variable in these anthologies and may be somewhat dependent on the guest editor's tastes, but this collection indicates that 2013 was a banner year for short crime fiction. Crime and criminality may provide the essential link between the stories in The Best American Short Stories 2013, but each author's unique approach and style ensures that the state of mystery fiction, at least in its short form, is as strong as it has ever been.


Grade: A

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