The Best American Mystery Stories 2002 »

Otto Penzler is the proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. He was publisher of The Armchair Detective, the founder of the Mysterious Press and the Armchair Detective Library, and created the publishing firm Otto Penzler Books. He is a recipient of an Edgar Award for The Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection and the Ellery Queen Award by the Mystery Writers of America for his many contributions to the field. He is the editor of The Vampire Archives and The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, which was a New York Times bestseller.

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 pieces from hundreds 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.
In his introduction to this year's collection, James Ellroy explores the differences between the novel and the short story. Included here are experts at both forms. Featuring renowned novelists like Stuart Kaminsky, Michael Connelly, Joe Gores, and Robert B. Parker, as well as veterans of this series like Brendan DuBois, Michael Downs, Joyce Carol Oates, and Clark Howard, this edition will delight readers with its wide variety and peerless quality.

Publishers Weekly

Kudos to series editor Otto Penzler and helpers for compiling a short list of 50 candidates for this sixth annual collection-and to guest editor Ellroy for selecting an impressively strong collection of 20 stories that ought to whet readers' appetites for more works by this lineup. In "High School Sweetheart," Joyce Carol Oates shows how far a brilliant premise can carry a writer. Robert B. Parker offers a fine baseball story, "Harlem Nocturne," about Jackie Robinson's off-field difficulties his rookie season. In "Two-Bagger," Michael Connelly also uses a baseball setting for a skillful tale of divided attentions. And Thomas H. Cook takes the gloves off in a yarn that ferrets out the truth behind a fixed boxing match in "The Fix." Perhaps the rarest gem is Brendan DuBois's "A Family Game," in which a bullying baseball dad gets his comeuppance from another parent. James Grady tells a rousing tale of a championship fight held in Montana-but it's the preliminary bout (and its preliminaries) that make "The Championship of Nowhere" one of the anthology's best entries. Clark Howard's "The Cobalt Blues" features a trio of men with absolutely nothing to lose as they plan a daring and (somewhat) altruistic caper that leaves readers chuckling. Darker tales, but very effective ones, come from established pros like Stuart M. Kaminsky, Annette Meyers and Joe R. Lansdale. This is a sterling collection that should both entertain and serve as an introduction to some formidable new talents. (Oct. 15) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.