The Best Mystery Stories of the Year

Starred review from July 26, 2021
The 20 entries in this superior anthology exhibit the storytelling gifts of authors both familiar and not. In David Morrell’s “Requiem for a Homecoming,” a masterpiece of suspense, two college friends reunite at the scene of a decades-old unsolved murder at their campus’s library in an effort to finally find the truth. Joyce Carol Oates takes readers on an unsettling journey inside the mind of a murderer in “Parole Hearing, California Institution for Women, Chino, CA,” which imagines the thoughts of a fictional disciple of Charles Manson as she appears before a parole board. David Marcum’s “The Adventure of the Home Office Baby,” a convincing Sherlock Holmes pastiche, masters the challenge of centering its plot on espionage rather than homicide. Members of a Manhattan jury become crime victims in Jacqueline Freimor’s ironic and moving “That Which Is True.” In Sue Grafton’s tense “If You Want Something Done Right,” an unpublished story found after her death, a wife is horrified to find that her purse, containing notes about doing away with her husband, has fallen into the wrong hands. This volume is a must for mystery aficionados.

August 27, 2021

An entertaining selection of the best mystery stories of 2020 (and one reprint by Ambrose Bierce), curated by best-selling thriller novelist Child ("Jack Reacher" series) and Penzler (publisher and proprietor of New York's Mysterious Bookshop). The collection includes a constellation of best-selling authors and a handful of less-familiar names. Stories are a delicious mix of style and subgenre--there isn't a weak link in the bunch. Michael Bracken's "Blest Be the Ties That Bind" is about a newlywed parson threatened by the mob. When things get too hot in 1950s LA, the lines of justice get blurry in Tom Mead's "Heatwave." John Floyd's "Biloxi Bound" features an unexpected antihero. Sue Grafton's posthumously published story "If You Want Something Done Right," with a widow plotting to kill her two-timing husband, is wickedly funny. James Lee Burke's atmospheric "Harbor Lights" lingers long after reading, and Stephen King's gleefully macabre entry "The Fifth Step" has a wonderful surprise ending. Although the stories represent a wide range of the mystery genre, the anthology is shockingly lacking in diversity. Of its 21 total stories, only six are written by women and none are by authors of color. VERDICT Purchase for large collections where short story collections and anthologies are popular. --Jennifer Knight, Coos Bay P.L., OR

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 20, 2021
A WWII-era story by James Lee Burke; a previously unknown story by Sue Grafton (discovered by her husband after her death); a twist-ending two-hander from Stephen King; a parole-hearing statement by an imaginary Charles Manson disciple; an introduction by editor Child that plunges us back into history to examine the very origins (or at least some possible origins) of fiction--these are just some of the delights in this terrific anthology. Child has selected 20 stories, and you could spend your time asking whether they truly are the 20 best mystery stories published in 2020, or you could simply spend your time reading them. There is such a wide variety here, in terms of literary style and subject matter, that it's hard to imagine a genre fan who would not find something to treasure. The book belongs on the shelf next to such essential anthologies as the Best American Mystery Stories series and Akashic Books' voluminous Noir series.

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