The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2023

by Amor Towles (Editor), Otto Penzler (Editor)

Overview

Amor Towles selects the best mystery short stories of the year, including tales by Andrew Child, Jeffery Deaver, and T.C. Boyle.

In his introduction to this volume, guest editor Amor Towles pays tribute to the forgotten person of the mystery story—the cadaver. “Male or female, old or young, rich or poor,” he writes, “for over a hundred years the cadaver has been accommodating, gracious, and generally on time. There is no other figure in crime who has proven to be more reliable.”

Like the cadaver, this anthology series, now in its third year of publication, is also proving reliable, bringing to readers the finest mystery/crime/suspense stories of the year from a variety of sources including mystery and general interest magazines, anthologies, online publications, and literary periodicals.

Among the treasures collected herein are Jeffery Deaver’s “Dodge,” in which a chess match between a volatile woman and a U.S. marshal takes a surprise twist; “The Landscaper’s Wife,” a suspense-filled tale by Brendan DuBois that explodes all expectation; and Kerry Hammond’s “Strangers at a Table,” which offers a darkly witty homage to Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple.

The collection contains well-known authors such as T.C. Boyle and up-and-comers such as Jessi Lewis; it features tales with famous crime-fighters (Jack Reacher and Sherlock Holmes) and a bonus story from the annals of mystery history by Edith Wharton. In short, these pages promise something for every reader of crime fiction, no matter the particularities of his or her taste.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613164495
Publisher:	Penzler Publishers
Publication date:	09/19/2023
Series:	Best Mystery Stories
Pages:	500
Sales rank:	28,585
Product dimensions:	7.90(w) x 5.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Amor Towles is the author of New York Times bestsellers Rules of Civility, A Gentleman in Moscow, and The Lincoln Highway. The three novels have collectively sold more than six million copies and have been translated into more than thirty languages. Towles lives in Manhattan with his wife and two children.

Otto Penzler, the creator of American Mystery Classics, is also the founder of The Mysterious Press (1975); MysteriousPress.com (2011), an electronic-book publishing company; and New York City’s Mysterious Bookshop (1979). He has won a Raven, the Ellery Queen Award, two Edgars (for the Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, 1977, and The Lineup, 2010), and lifetime achievement awards from NoirCon and The Strand Magazine. He has edited more than 70 anthologies and written extensively about mystery fiction.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS
Foreword. Otto Penzler
Introduction, Amor Towles

Doug Allyn, Blind Baseball
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, May/June
Derrick Belanger, The Adventure of the Misquoted Macbeth
A Detective’s Life: Sherlock Holmes, ed. by Martin Rosenstock (Titan Books)
T. Coraghessan Boyle, Princess
The New Yorker, November 7
Joslyn Chase, Cold Hands, Warm Heart
Mystery, Crime, and Mayhem: Cold Cases (Knotted Road)
Andrew Child, New Kid in Town
Hotel California, ed. by Don Bruns (Blackstone)
Aaron Philip Clark, Death at the Sundial Motel
Witnesses for the Dead, ed. by Gary Phillips & Gar Anthony Haywood ((Soho Crime)
Jeffery Deaver, Dodge
The Broken Doll (Amazon)
Brendan DuBois, The Landscaper’s Wife
Mystery Tribune, August/September
Kerry Hammond, Strangers at a Table
Malice Domestic: Murder Most Diabolical (Wildside)
Victor Kreuiter, Miller and Bell
Mystery Magazine, August
David Krugler, Two Sharks Walk into a Bar
Mystery Magazine, September
Tom Larsen, Pobre Maria
Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, January/February
Avram Lavinsky, Playing God
Best New England Crime Stories: Deadly Nightshade, ed. by Susan Oleksiw, Christine Bagley, and Leslie Wheeler (Crime Spell Books)
Jesse Lewis, Ears
Alaska Quarterly Review, Spring/Summer
Ashley Lister, The Smoking Gunners
The Book of Extraordinary Femme Fatale Stories, ed. by Maxim Jakubowski (Mango)
Sean McCluskey, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday
Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, Vol. 3, ed. by Michael Bracken (Down & Out Books)
Michael Mallory, What the Cat Dragged in
The Strand Magazine, Vol 68
Lou Manfredo, Sundown
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, March/April
Annie Reed, The Promise
Mystery, Crime, and Mayhem: Cold Cases (Knotted Road)
Anna Round, Glass
The Briarcliff Review
Joseph S. Walker, Crime Scene
Malice in Dallas: Metroplex Mysteries, ed. by Barb Goffman

Editorial Reviews

"Top marks once again to Penzler and his chosen authors, and to guest editor Towles for yet another outstanding annual compilation of mystery stories. This one deserves a place in every mystery collection."

Booklist STARRED REVIEW

★ 07/10/2023

After a spirited introduction on the history of crime fiction from editor Towles (A Gentleman in Moscow), this wide-ranging anthology kicks off with Doug Allyn’s deliciously clever “Blind Baseball.” In it, explosives expert Luke Duroy tries to defuse a roadside bomb in Iraq to protect his fellow American soldiers, but he unwittingly interferes with a tontine in the process. Derrick Belanger’s “The Adventure of the Misquoted Macbeth” is a smart Sherlock Holmes pastiche centering on a Shakespearean line flub in a strange message delivered to a debt collector; Belanger adds depth to the high-fizz tale by anchoring it in Dr. Watson’s tense relationship with his estranged brother. Kerry Hammond successfully evokes the tone and plot twists of golden age mystery fiction in “Strangers at a Table,” in which three passengers aboard an Amtrak dining car en route to Denver are invited by a fourth, a Miss Marple devotee, to share the story of “a little mystery” they have personal knowledge of, with shocking results. Across a dizzying number of subgenres, this collection delights by prizing quality over name recognition. There’s something here for every mystery fan. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

2023-07-13
Variety is the keynote for these 21 recent reprints and one century-old bonus story.

Both editor Towles and series editor Otto Penzler emphasize the central importance of dead bodies in mystery fiction, ignoring the fact that two of the stories they’ve chosen end with the entire cast still alive. Aaron Philip Clark, Tom Larsen, Michael Mallory, and Ashley Lister choose characters or settings—an undocumented mother helpless to get justice for her son’s death, a corrupt Ecuadorian cop, a house cat fitted with a camera that records a murder in progress, a prostitute who shot the trafficker/witness she was hired to entertain—that provide welcome originality, and Lou Manfredo, Annie Reed, Anna Round, and Jessi Lewis showcase elegiac moments that are variously open-ended, the inconclusiveness of the last two especially effective. Most of the remaining stories tick the boxes for established but diverse subgenres. Victor Kreuiter and Joseph S. Walker follow hit men who come out of retirement for one last score. Joslyn Chase’s reopening of a cold case is an expertly compressed procedural. Andrew Child’s latest Jack Reacher adventure is interesting mainly for its uncertainty about which minor details will provide springboards for action. Jeffery Deaver’s cat-and-mouse game between a U.S. marshal and an explosively violent woman is notable for one of Deaver’s trademark surprises halfway through. Derrick Belanger pens a deft Sherlock-ian pastiche; Kerry Hammond introduces a darkly witty twist to her homage to Miss Marple; Sean McCluskey salutes the more hard-boiled criminals Parker and Keller in his tale of a no-holds-barred attorney seeking his wealthy client’s kidnapped daughter. The best of these traditional stories is Brendan DuBois’ predictable but perfectly turned account of a wealthy fugitive who’s blackmailed by his gardener.

Edith Wharton’s 1926 “A Bottle of Perrier” sets a high bar for everything that precedes it. Good thing it comes last.

Kirkus Reviews