From Publishers Weekly
Did you hear the story about the guy who shows up at his brother's house after a long absence with a van full of old wedding dresses? It's called "Family," was written by San Francisco-based Dan Leone, appeared originally in a magazine called "Literal Latte," and is one of the 20 unusually excellent tales of crime and mystery published in 2000 and collected by the hard-working series editor Otto Penzler and MWA Grand Master Lawrence Block for this fifth annual celebration of the form. Like one of those taster menus of small but wonderful items served at top restaurants, this is a rich and satisfying collation. Although every story is well worth reading, particularly dazzling are "Lobster Night," by Russell Banks, whose first line -"Stacy didn't mean to tell Noonan that when she was seventeen she was struck by lightning" deserves an award of its own; William Gay's "The Paperhanger," a Hitchcock movie waiting for the Master to return to make it; and "Her Hollywood" by Michael Hyde, which just about slides in under the wire of Block's dictum that "a crime or the threat of a crime is a central element" but is a chilling exercise in any genre. More traditional, but no less satisfying, are cop stories ("Erie's Last Day," by Steve Hockensmith, and "Under Suspicion," by Clark Howard); a private eye outing (Jeremiah Healy's "A Book of Kells"); and even an FBI effort (T. Jefferson Parker's "Easy Street"). A most impressive compilation especially given that, as Block notes in his introduction, two thirds of those selected were writers whose names were new to him. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


Review
"For those of you who like your vittles cafeteria-style, this is a nice spread of taste treats."


Book Description
Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads hundreds of pieces from dozens of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to the twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind.THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2001 will thrill fans of all reaches of the genre. The legendary mystery writer Lawrence Block offers chilling tales from best-selling writers as well as talented up-and-comers. Ranging from traditional detective cases to psychological studies to atmospheric scene-setters, these stories illustrate the variety and broad range of styles, plots, and characters Block admires in the genre. With Block as guest editor and a stellar roster of suspense veterans and rising stars, the 2001 edition will delight mystery afcionados and all lovers of great fiction.


About the Author
An Edgar Award winner, Otto Penzler is the founder of the Mysterious Bookshops and the Mysterious Press. He lives in New York City.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
IntroductionThe american mystery short story, it is my pleasant duty to report, is in very good shape. Were you to skip this introduction and go directly to the stories themselves, you"d discover as much on your own. And, I must say, every impulse but that of ego leads me to urge you to do just that. The stories, to be sure, are why we"re all here. They are the best of this year"s crop, and the crop itself was a bountiful one. And they were written, each and every one of them, for love -- love of the ideas that propel them, love of the characters that inhabit them, love of the pure task of dreaming imaginary worlds and putting well-chosen words on paper (or the screen, or what you will). This introduction, on the other hand, was written for money. It"s part of my job as guest editor, which consists primarily of reading the year"s fifty best stories as selected by Otto Penzler with the assistance of Michele Slung and choosing twenty of that number for this volume. Having performed that happy task, I"m further required to string together a hundred sentences with the aim of producing something that will serve to introduce twenty fine stories, which, truth to tell, need no introduction. My words, however, will help to justify the presence of my name on the book"s cover, and will also help me earn my fee. Should I apologize for my mercenary motive? I think not. I am guided, after all, by Samuel Johnson"s immortal words: "No man but a blockhead wrote but for money."*Would the good Dr. Johnson"s words echo so resoundingly in my soul, I have often wondered, had he picked some other word? A dimwit, say, or a palpable ass, or a clod or a clown or a numbskull? "No man but a witling, sir, wrote but for money." It has, I submit, every bit as good a ring to it, and it leaves my own innocent surname well out of it. Ah, well. It has always seemed to me that the precise meaning of Johnson"s utterance is subject to interpretation. Perhaps he is saying that the person who writes in the happy anticipation of anything beyond financial reward is playing the fool. If you expect to make a name for yourself, or achieve literary immortality, or change the world, or pile up brownie points in heaven, then surely you"re a blockhead -- because money"s all you can truly hope to gain for your efforts. Because, certainly, Johnson himself was nowhere near as mercenary as the quoted sentence makes him appear. He wrote for money, unquestionably, and he might well have stopped writing had they stopped paying him, but he wrote also with the clear intent of adding to the world"s store of knowledge and enhancing English literature. Indeed, his dictum works every bit as well, and sounds just as likely to have been uttered by him, if we take it and turn it on its head, to wit: "No man but a blockhead wrote solely for money." And who can argue with that? There are easier ways to make a living -- almost all of them, come to think of it -- and few less likely ways to amass a fortune.Back to our twenty superb stories, and the twenty blockheads who"ve written them. Where, you may ask, do I get off calling them that? How can I be so sure money was not what got them written? Simple: There"s no economic incentive these days to write short stories. Without getting trapped in history, let me just state briefly that it was not ever thus. In the 1920s, top slick magazines paid top writers as much as $5,000 for a short story. (That"s the equivalent of what in today"s purchasing power? $100,000? More?) In the "30s and "40s, the pulp magazines assured any genuinely competent writer of a market for all the short fiction he could turn out -- at a low word rate, to be sure, but enough to constitute a living wage. No more. It may be technically possible to make a living writing short fiction, but I know of only one person who does so, year in and year out. (That"s the extraordinary Edward D. Hoch, whose remarkably fertile imagination has proven to be a limitless font of short story ideas.) Short stories, for most of us, are hard to write and hard to sell, and the ones that sell don"t pay much. So why write them?Some of us don"t. When I began writing professionally, shortly after the invention of movable type, most aspiring mystery writers broke in by publishing short stories in magazines. Within a decade most of those magazines had vanished, and often enough a writer"s first novel was that writer"s first published work. Nowadays it"s increasingly common for writers who have achieved some recognition for their novels to be invited to contribute short stories to original anthologies, and frequently this has induced them to write short fiction for the first time. I myself began as a writer of short stories. The young writer I was could not possibly have sat down and written a novel right off the bat. I had to write and publish a couple dozen short stories before I was ready to attempt something longer. As soon as I could, I began writing novels, and it is the novel that has kept bread on my table over the years. But I never stopped writing short stories, and hope to go on as long as I have breath and brain cells available for the task. Why? Because it"s satisfying. Because the short story, for all the hard work involved, is as close as this trade comes to instant gratification. Any novel I"ve written has had stretches in it not unlike trench warfare. Short stories, sometimes written at a single sitting, rarely taking more than a week overall, are less of a drain and more of a kick. Because it"s liberating. I can turn my hand to themes and backgrounds and types of characters in a short story with which I would not feel comfortable spending an entire novel. I can take chances, knowing that failure means I"ve wasted days, not months or years. Because it"s fun.I suspect the authors of these twenty stories found the business of writing them to be satisfying, liberating, and fun. I certainly had fun reading them, and I trust you will as well. I think you will be struck, as I was, by the richness of these stories, and by the extraordinary variety -- of theme, of mood, of style -- to be found here. The only commonality, really, aside from their excellence, is that all of these stories are crime stories -- which is to say that a crime or the threat of a crime is a central element in each of them. The variety this affords is boundless. At the same time, however, I submit that crime is a defining element in a way that various topical themes are not. People have put together anthologies in which all of the stories are about dogs, say, or take place on shipboard, or involve children, and this sort of theme can make for a successful collection, but the common feature does not define the stories. Crime is somehow more generic -- which, I suppose, helps explain why the mystery is very much a literary genre, and an enduring one. It is, as you"ll see, one with a very broad canopy, a house with many mansions. You may also be struck by the number of unfamiliar names in this volume"s table of contents. Two thirds of the writers whose stories I"ve selected are men and women whose names and work are new to me. And this suggests to me that the short story -- the mystery short story -- is still the door through which many new writers emerge. I think that"s a good thing. The whole mystery genre, we shouldn"t forget, originated in the short story. That, after all, is what Poe wrote. And here are twenty hugely talented writers following in his dark footsteps. You have a treat in store for you. Enjoy!Lawrence BlockThe Best AmericanMystery Stories 2001Copyright © 2001 by Houghton Mifflin CompanyIntroduction copyright © 2001 by Lawrence Block

FROM OUR EDITORS

From tales of stealthy sleuthing to hard-boiled whodunits, from romantic noir thrillers to cliff-hanging conundrums, there's something for every mystery lover in this devilishly entertaining short story anthology. Featuring selections from giants of the genre as well as literary luminaries rarely found in such collections, this fifth edition of the eagerly anticipated annual belongs on every mystery reader's bookshelf.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The best-selling mystery writer Lawrence Block proves his point with the twenty outstanding stories he has chosen for this volume. For fans of the traditional mystery, there's T. Jefferson Parker's "Easy Street," in which a brother's visit uncovers family secrets. In Jeremiah Healy's "A Book of Kells," a detective draws on his Irish heritage to solve a crime. And in Clark Howard's "Under Suspicion," a detective's investigation of the murder of his best friend's daughter hits too close to home.

However, many of the stories are concerned more with the personalities and motives surrounding the crime than with the crime itself. In Joyce Carol Oates's "The Girl with the Blackened Eye," we see a crime from the young victim's point of view. Jennifer Anderson's "Things That Make Your Heart Beat Faster" examines the hardships one rookie cop endures while solving her first crime. And in Thomas Lynch's "Blood Sport," a young mortician faces the gruesome job of preparing a murdered friend for her funeral.

As Block says: "Three things struck me about the stories in this year's collection -- their range, their variety, and their exceptionally high quality. Crime fiction has always been a broad and inclusive field, but these stories epitomize its breadth, running from the literary to the retro-pulp. The field has always showcased new talent, and a full two thirds of this year's winners are by writers previously unknown to me. I've been reading short crime fiction for half a century, and writing it for almost that long, and I'm still blown away by how very fine these stories are."

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly