Product Description: The best-selling author Carl Hiaasen takes the reins for the eleventh edition of this series, featuring twenty of the past year's most distinguished tales of mystery, crime, and suspense.
Laura Lippman introduces us to a suburban soccer mom who moonlights as a call girl and who has a fateful encounter with a former client at her son's soccer game. Ridley Pearson traces a famous author of horror tales who becomes trapped in a real one after his wife vanishes while jogging. Joyce Carol Oates travels to a New Jersey racetrack where the animals that break down are of the two-legged type. Lawrence Block tells the story of Keller, a hitman for hire who happens to live in Greenwich Village, loves spicy food, and collects stamps as a hobby. And Scott Wolven plunges us into the world of an ex-con who takes a job at a private and very illegal Nevada racetrack where each day millions are won and lost. Mostly lost.
As Carl Hiaasen notes in his introduction, "The stories in this collection would do honor to any anthology of short literature. More than transcending the genre of crime, they blow away its nebulous boundaries." The Best American Mystery Stories 2007 is a powerful collection certain to delight mystery aficionados and all lovers of great fiction.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Always a Winner
The Best American Mystery Stories series is always one of the year's highlights and the 2007 collection is dark, edgy, innovative and exciting. Many old favorites are onhand but so are many new and exciting writers. Is some of the subject matter disturbing? Absolutely! From animal killing to soccer-mom prostitutes, this is a collection that doesn't play it safe. Yet the consistancy of quality is always there. While I prefered some stories more than others, I found every story in this collection interesting and worth my time. Short stories make perfect reading in today's busy world and this collection is a great way to start getting into them!
Rating: - great original and new dark crime stories
if you love cozies, then don't buy this book. get a cup of hot milk and an miss marple and leave now. fleeee! because this is a dark book. but it's a FABULOUS collection if you love dark noir, crime writing by the best of the best, including:
STAB by Chris Adrian! This is my personal favorite -- the smartest most evocative piece I have ever seen from a child's pov. His story, john dufresne's and scott wolven's are disturbing and fresh crime stories from the dark side of humanity and shouldn't be missed! sophistocated readers will also take satisfaction in the entire collection, especially stories by the usual suspects: joyce carol oates, ridley pearson, laura lippman at her darkest. Fresh, original, dark writing here. Transportive stuff -- so transportive that the suspense might just keep you up at night, either that or the excellent caliber of writing!
Rating: - Unpleasant collection
This disappointing anthology confuses "mystery" with turgidly written sordidness. If you are looking for ratiocination, deduction - or even civility - look elsewhere. Few of the stories in this collection were readable, as most of them comprised emotive, profanity-laced, hyperbolic ineptly written dialect and bombast. The characters tended to be borderline retarded, and the prose was overwrought. Previous anthologies in this series usually had a couple of well-written and thought-provoking stories, but not this one. None of the stories here raises a puzzle to be solved by the reader, for example.
My favorite was T-Bird by John Bond, which did an excellent job portraying the life of a professional poker player and which deftly tied together the poker and the action. This was a reasonably interesting and well-written story, but its company kind of dragged it down.
Here are my individual reviews of each story:
Stab, by Chris Adrian. I gave up after the first few rather disgusting pages.
Solomon's Alley, by Robert Andrews. I lasted half-a-page, until those gratuitous profanites that mark the inept writer.
Keller's Double Dribble, by Lawrence Block. I lasted until the second page of this one, when a clumsy conversation between a customer and a waiter in an Indian restaurant ("You wish to sweat" "I wish to suffer" etc.) ruined it for me.
T-Bird, by John Bond. Powerful and well-written, particularly if you are interested in poker. A terrific evocation of the characters in a poker room.
A Season of Regret, James Lee Burke. I skimmed this one. Seemed unremarkable.
The Timing of Unfelt Smiles, by John DuFresne. Didn't make it past the disgusting first half-page. Seems like a typically inept job, confusing goriness with skill.
Gleason, by Louise Erdrich. Readable and not entirely uninteresting character study based on a Fargo scenario.
Chellini's Solution, by Jim Fusilli. I skipped this one, which seemed a bit overwrought based on the first couple of sentences.
Where Will You Go When Your Skin Cannot Contain You, by William Gay. One of those stories written in some odd diction, I lasted maybe a page.
Take the Man's Pay, by Robert Knightly. The first line of dialogue is "What's up wit' Charlie Chang?" and it did not appear to improve. Maybe a page before I gave up.
One True Love by Laura Lippman. Quit after pointless profanity in the first paragraph.
The Spot, by David Means. A "funny diction" story, which I gave up on within a page.
Rodney Valen's Second Life. Another "funny diction" story, interlaced with profanity - I don't think I made it to the end of the first incoherent paragraph.
Meadowlands, by Joyce Carol Oates. I could not believe this story used the word "sweetheart" in dialogue twice in the first page - I didn't last longer. Strange diction too.
Jakob Loomis, by Jason Ockert. I skimmed it, seemed somewhat pointlessly gory and unsubtle.
Queeny, by Ridley Pearson. Excellent first paragraph leading into a concise and well-written story that raises intriguing questions.
Lucy Had a List, by John Sandford. Lot of profanity in the few pages I made it through in this one.
The True History, by Brent Spencer. Seemed overwritten from the first paragraph, I didn't get past that.
Pinwheel, by Scott Wolven. Well-written, interesting plot, but a jejune finale.
- Always a Winner
- Unpleasant collection
