Joyce Carol Oates - The best American mystery stories

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The Best American

Mystery Stories 2005

Ed by Joyce Carol Oates

No copyright2on by MadMaxAU eBooks

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Contents

by Joyce Carol Oates

RICHARD BURGIN

LOUISE ERDRICH

DANIEL HANDLER

GEORGE V. HIGGINS

EDWARD P. JONES

STUART M. KAMINSKY

DENNIS LEHANE

LAURA LIPPMAN

TIM MCLOUGHLIN

LOU MANFREDO

DAVID MEANS

KENT NELSON

DANIEL OROZCO

DAVID RACHEL

JOSEPH RAICHE

JOHN SAYLES

SAM SHAW

OZ SPIES

SCOTT TUROW

SCOTT WOLVEN

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Foreword

it is possible, I suppose, that there is a smarter, harder-working, more dedicated literary figure on planet Earth than Joyce Carol Oates, but someone else will have to point out who that might be. Dont ask me to do it.

When I asked Ms. Oates to be the guest editor for this volume, I didnt quite know what I was getting into. (I could rewrite that sentence to avoid ending it with a preposition, but somehow it just sounds a bit off to say I didnt quite know into what I was getting, so Ill just let it go.)

It is the role of the series editor for all the volumes in Houghton Mifflins prestigious Best American series to select the years fifty best stories, and then for the guest editor to select the top twenty from that group. It was a little different this year. Ms. Oates started reading before I did, and recommended stories before I even found them. She wanted batches of stories throughout the year, rather than all fifty at once, and we engaged in frequent (I might even be tempted to say relentless) correspondence, our respective fax machines humming at every hour, and eventually telephone conversations while we debated the relative merits of certain stories. This 2005 volume is certainly the most collaborative one yet. Im not entirely certain we followed all the guidelines set by my editor at Houghton Mifflin, but I can assure you that all of the time and energy were directed at a single goal, which was to make the book the best it could be. I hope you agree that we have achieved that.

Speaking of guidelines, this is a good time to point out how great it is to work for a house like Houghton Mifflin. It is well understood in the publishing world that if anthologies are to have any chance of success, they must have some big names among the contributors. Never not once has Houghton Mifflin suggested that these annual volumes (this is the ninth) should have bigger names. From the first day I started as the series editor, it was about the writing. The best stories (or at least those I most admired) were nominated, and the guest editors have followed that directive.

Its not about the most popular authors, and its not about personal relationships (two close friends, both at my wedding this past May, didnt make the cut, though both are accomplished writers, named Grand Masters by the Mystery Writers of America, who have been selected for this series in the past). Its about finding the best stories, by whoever happens to have written them.

It is not uncommon for excellent writers to become famous, so although there are a few extremely popular writers in this book (Scott Turow, Louise Erdrich, George V. Higgins), it is doubtful that you know very many of the others. It is equally likely, however, that you will.

Tom Franklins first appearance in book form was in the 1999 edition of Best American Mystery Stones, with a masterpiece titled Poachers; he went on to publish a short story collection with William Morrow titled Poachers and Other Stories, followed by a novel, Hell at the Breech. Christopher Coake had never been published in book form until All Through the House was collected in BAMS last year; his short story collection, Were in Trouble, under the prestigious imprint of Harcourt Brace, launches what should be a great career. Scott Wolven, too, who makes his fourth consecutive appearance in BAMS this year, had not been published in any book before The Copper Kings was selected for the 2002 volume, and now he has a book issued by Scribner, Controlled Burn: Stories of Prison, Crime, and Men. With the quality of the stories contained between these covers, it is impossible to imagine that some of the authors in BAMS 2005 wont have more of their work published in the satisfying permanence of books.

You know how much fun it is to read a book that you love or see a movie that moves you and to share that with a friend who comes back and tells you how much he loved it, too. Thats one of the things that makes editing this series such a great job. I get to recommend a lot of stories to a lot of people, almost all of whom seem to be pretty happy about it, even though the title of the book is a little misleading for the literal-minded.

Few of these stories are detective fiction, a tale in which an official police officer, a private eye, or an amateur sleuth is confronted with a crime and pursues the culprit by making observations and deductions. It has been my practice to define a mystery story as any work of fiction in which a crime or the threat of a crime is central to the theme or plot. There is greater emphasis in these pages on why a crime was committed, or if it will be done at all, than on trying to discover the perpetrator, which has upset some readers. That simply cant be helped.

The nature of mystery fiction has changed over the years, and there are simply fewer and fewer works of pure detection than there were during the so-called golden age between World Wars I and II, when Agatha Christie, John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen, Dorothy L. Sayers, and their peers were constructing ingenious puzzles and challenging readers to solve them before Hercule Poirot, Gideon Fell, Ellery Queen, or Lord Peter Wimsey did.

With authors focused more on the psychological aspects of crime, whether from the point of view of the detective, the victim, or the criminal, there appears to be greater strength of characterization and style than there was in the more classic form of pure detection. There are exceptions, of course, and when they occur, there is a pretty good chance that those stories will make it into these pages.

No mention of The Best American Mystery Stories is complete without genuflecting to Michele Slung, the fastest and smartest reader in the world, who combs every consumer magazine, every electronic zine, and as many literary journals as we can find. She scans hundreds no, let me correct that thousands of stories to determine which are mysteries (if you were searching for stories for this book, would you have expected Disaster Stamps of Pluto to qualify by virtue of its title? Or Loyalty? Or Old Boys, Old Girls?). She then culls those that have the vibe of having been scrawled with a crayon, and gives me the rest. She can read in a day what Id need a month to do; without her dedication and intelligence, this annual volume would take three years to compile.

While Im throwing thank-yous around, Id like again to note the huge contributions of the guest editors, who so generously help make these wonderful books possible. It all began with Robert B. Parker in 1997, followed by Sue Grafton, Ed McBain, Donald E. Westlake, Lawrence Block, James Ellroy, Michael Connelly, Nelson DeMille, as well as Joyce Carol Oates this year, to all of whom I am forever indebted.