Dzhejms Grejdi - The Best American Mystery Stories 2002

It Is Raining in Bejucal by John Biguenet. First published in Zoetrope, Summer 2001. Copyright 2001 by AZX Publications. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Two-Bagger by Michael Connelly. First published in Murderers Row Copyright 2001 by Michael Connelly. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Fix by Thomas H. Cook. First published in Murder on the Ropes. Copyright 2001 by Thomas H. Cook. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Summa Mathematica by Sean Doolittle. First published in Crime Spree. Copyright 2001 by Sean Doolittle. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Man Kills Wife, Two Dogs by Michael Downs. First published in Willow Springs. Copyright 2001 by Michael Downs. Reprinted by permission of the author.

A Family Game by Brendan DuBois. First published in Murderers Row. Copyright 2001 by Brendan DuBois. Reprinted by permission of Jed Mattes, Inc.

The Blue Mirror by David Edgerley Gates. First published in Alfred Hitchcocks Mystery Magazine. Copyright 2001 by David Edgerley Gates. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Inscrutable by Joe Gores. First published in The Mysterious Press Anniversary Anthology. Copyright 2001 by Dojo, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Championship of Nowhere by James Grady. First published in Murder on the Ropes. Copyright 2001 by James Grady. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Cobalt Blues by Clark Howard. First published in Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine. Copyright 2001 by Clark Howard. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Sometimes Something Goes Wrong by Stuart M. Kaminsky. First published in The Mysterious Press Anniversary Anthology. Copyright 2001 by Stuart M. Kaminsky. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Mule Rustlers by Joe R. Lansdale. First published in The Mysterious Press Anniversary Anthology. Copyright 2001 by Joe R. Lansdale. Reprinted by permission of the author c/o The Vines Agency.

Maniac Loose by Michael Malone. First published in A Confederacy of Crime. Copyright 2001 by Michael Malone. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Counting by Fred Melton. First published in Talking River Review, Summer 2001. Copyright 2001 by Fred Melton. Reprinted by permission of the author.

You Dont Know Me by Annette Meyers. First published in Flesh and Blood. Copyright 2001 by Annette Meyers. Reprinted by permission of Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency, Inc.

The High School Sweetheart by Joyce Carol Oates. First published in Playboy, January 2001. Copyright 2001 by The Ontario Review, Inc. Reprinted by permission of The Ontario Review, Inc.

Harlem Nocturne by Robert B. Parker. First published in Murderers Row. Copyright 2001 by Robert B. Parker. Reprinted by permission of The Helen Brann Agency, Inc.

Midnight Emissions by F. X. Toole. First published in Murder on the Ropes. Copyright 2001 by F. X. Toole. Reprinted by permission of the author.

A Lepidopterists Tale by Daniel Waterman. First published in Bomb, Fall 2001. Copyright 2001 by Daniel Waterman. Reprinted by permission of International Creative Management, Inc.

The Copper Kings by Scott Wolven. First published in HandHeldCrime & Plots with Guns, January 2001. Copyright 2001 by Scott Wolven. Reprinted by permission of International Creative Management, Inc.

On a recent trip to one of the Souths literary meccas, Oxford, Mississippi, I had the pleasure of spending a great deal of time with literary folks authors, booksellers, editors, publishers, professors who take books and writing very seriously. Included with visits to William Faulkners home, the University of Mississippis special collections library, Square Books (at which John Grisham happened to be doing a signing), were many hours spent with good wine, cold beer, and conversation.

This wasnt ordinary conversation, at least not to me. It was among people who love literature as much as I do and who care about it passionately. The talk swung freely: a writer is described as a little full of himself but is then quickly conceded to be one of the best writers in the state, a discussion immediately followed by a roundtable argument of which of his books is the best and which is the worst, with more than one drinker oops, I mean conversationalist cogently quoting beautiful lines from his work.

The reason this discussion is appropriate (at least I think it is) is that, without exception, those involved in the conversation love mystery fiction. While one argued that Thomas Wolfe is a better writer than either Faulkner or Hemingway (I excused him on the basis of his having consumed nearly a case of Budweiser) and others tussled over whether Cormac McCarthy is as good as or better than Faulkner (remember, this occurred in Faulkners longtime home, so he was used as the measuring stick for all American writers, although most of us know that Hemingway was the greatest writer of the twentieth century, closely followed by Raymond Chandler), there was agreement on one point. Mystery and crime fiction ranks with the best literary production of these times, as it has for a long time.

Every person engaged in these nightly confabs was acutely familiar with this series of anthologies from Houghton Mifflin. A few of them had work appear in its pages, and several were disappointed (permit me to state it gently) that theirs hadnt yet been selected. Not one of them is what would be described as a mystery writer. They were writing the best, most powerful, passionate, realistic fiction that they knew how to do. Yet all had written stories or novels in which murders or other criminal acts were committed.

As has been true for the first five volumes in this series, the twenty stories that make up this distinguished collection help broaden the boundaries of mystery fiction, which I define as any work in which a crime or the threat of a crime is central to the theme or the plot of the story. Detective stories are merely one subgenre of this very wide-reaching literary form.

This years guest editor reflects that stretching of the borders. James Ellroy, described by Joyce Carol Oates as our American Dostoevski, began his career as a writer of traditional mysteries, albeit with a hard edge and an original prose style. His first book, Browns Requiem, is a private-eye novel. His second, Clandestine, is a police novel, as are his next several novels. Although the police, and even private eyes, continue to have a place in his work, many layers of politics, jurisprudence, and social history have been added. He has helped blur the lines between mystery fiction and serious fiction as if they ever needed to be separated in the first place. The suggestion that Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Horace McCoy, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and Robert B. Parker werent writing social commentary while also writing first-rate mystery fiction means only that the reader missed much of the point.

On a different subject, more or less, a word needs to be said about the possibility of perceived favoritism, or nepotism, or some ism or another.

In addition to this series for Houghton Mifflin, I also edit other mystery and crime anthologies and have done so for many years. These other books are different in that I commission stories specifically for them. In 2001, those mystery anthologies had specific themes of baseball (Murderers Row) and boxing (Murder on the Ropes). It seems to me only natural that I would request stories from authors I admire, which is what I did.

As the end of the year approached, I was looking for the best original mysteries of the year; I could not ignore the books I edited nor the authors who wrote for them. Sure enough, they produced some of the best mystery stories of the year, and several of these stories will be found on these pages, as Ellroy agreed that they were outstanding and deserved to be here.