The Best American Mystery Stories 2019

by Jonathan Lethem (Editor), Otto Penzler (Series Editor)

New York Times best-selling author of ten genre-bending novels Jonathan Lethem helms this collection of the year’s best mystery short fiction. 

For Jonathan Lethem, “crime stories are deep species gossip.” He writes in his introduction that “they’re fundamentally stories of power, of its exercise, both spontaneous and conspiratorial; stories of impulse and desire, and of the turning of tables.” The Best American Mystery Stories 2019 has its full share of salacious intrigue, guilt, and retribution. The twists and bad decisions pile up when a thief picks the wrong target or a simple scavenger hunt takes a terrible turn. What happens when you befriend a death row inmate, or just how does writing Internet clickbait became a decidedly dangerous occupation? “How can we not hang on their outcomes?” asks Lethem. “Are we innocent ourselves, or complicit?” Read on to find out.

Foreword / Otto Penzler --
Introduction / Jonathan Lethem --
Coach O / Robert Hinderliter --
keepers of all sins / Sharon Hunt --
Open house / Reed Johnson --
damn fine town / Arthur Klepchukov --
walk-in / Harley Jane Kozak --
Top ten vacation selfies of YouTube stars / Preston Lang --
Mastermind / Jared Lipof --
That Donnelly crowd / Anne Therese Macdonald --
clown / Mark Mayer --
Interpreting American Gothic / Rebecca McKanna --
Hannah-beast / Jennifer McMahon --
archivist / Joyce Carol Oates --
box of hope / Brian Panowich --
Payback / Tonya D. Price --
If you say so / Suzanne Proulx --
Neighbors / Ron Rash --
Faint of heart / Amanda Rea --
Lush / Duane Swierczynski --
Inside man / Robb T. White --
Burning down the house / Ted White --
Contributor's notes --
Other distinguished mystery stories of 2018

Genres: Short Stories, Mystery, Fiction, Anthologies, Thriller, Mystery Thriller

336 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2019

About the author

Jonathan Allen Lethem (born February 19, 1964) is an American novelist, essayist and short story writer.

His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. It was followed by three more science fiction novels. In 1999, Lethem published Motherless Brooklyn, a National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novel that achieved mainstream success. In 2003, he published The Fortress of Solitude, which became a New York Times Best Seller.

In 2005, he received a MacArthur Fellowship

Reviews

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls · Rating 3 out of 5]

The 2019 edition of this annual mystery/crime anthology was guest edited by Jonathem Lethem, who appears to have picked the most unusual and offbeat stories possible (from a selection of 50 stories provided by series editor Otto Penzler). As a result, the overall quality isn't quite up to par for the series, although as usual there are a few gems. This list of stories below contains a rating for each as well as some song lyrics that you may find perspicacious or mirthful, or not.

Coach O by Robert Hinderliter - 3/5 - are you ready for some football?
The Keepers of All Sins by Sharon Hunt - 2/5 - I have a suggestion to keep you all occupied: learn to swim
Open House by Reed Johnson - 3/5 - ain't that America, home of the free, yeah
A Damn Fine Town by Arthur Klepchukov - 3/5 - I enjoy stealing, it's just as simple as that
The Walk-In by Harley Jane Kozak - 3/5 - everybody wants to be a cat
Top Ten Vacation Selfies of YouTube Stars by Preston Lang - 4/5 - out of the doorway the bullets rip
Mastermind by Jared Lipof - 3/5 - they're watching you, they see your every move
That Donnelly Crowd by Anne-Therese MacDonald - 4/5 - the boys are back in town
The Clown by Mark Mayer - 4/5 - when I was down, I was your clown
Interpreting American Gothic by Rebecca McKanna - 4/5 - let me clip your dirty wings
Hannah-Beast by Jennifer McMahon - 4/5 - you look so absurd, you look so obscene
The Archivist by Joyce Carol Oates - 4/5 - just like the old man in that book by Nabokov
A Box of Hope by Brian Panowich - 3/5 - there's still time to change the road you're on
Payback by Tonya D. Price - 2/5 - just two good ol' boys, never meaning no harm
If You Say So by Suzanne Proulx - 3/5 - I'm gonna get close to you
Neighbors by Ron Rash - 4/5 - the people I meet always go their separate ways
Faint of Heart by Amanda Rea - 3/5 - maybe the life I left is comin' back for me
Lush by Duane Swierczynski - 4/5 - you know when I drink alone I prefer to be by myself
Inside Man by Robb T. White - 3/5 - everybody's out on the road tonight but there's no place left to hide
Burning Down the House by Ted White - 2/5 - out on the streets, that's where we'll meet

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this mystery short stories anthology for Christmas and, for the most part, I enjoyed reading it. As with most anthologies, the short stories were hit and miss. The outstanding short stories for me were:
"Neighbors" by Ron Rash
"Faint of Heart" by Amanda Rea
"Inside Man" by Robb T. White
"Payback" by Tonya D. Price
"A Box of Hope" by Brian Panowich

[Sid Stark · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Best American Mystery Stories 2019" is, as promised, full of excellent mystery stories. Although the word "mystery" in the title might be a little misleading. Many of the stories are not so much mysteries (although there are those as well) as they are suspense stories or thrillers. Strongly literary in their bent, they often hint at resolution rather than achieving it outright, and sometimes end at a most tantalizing moment. They span everything from the Civil War to a dystopian future of unnamed date, take place around the globe, and range in tone from Reed Johnson's heartwarming story of a young girl trying to clear her father's name, to Joyce Carol Oates' chilling tale of a pedophilia victim who feels a special connection with her abuser.

What all the stories in this collection have in common is a keen eye and ear for pacing and plotting. All of them, whether the narrator is a vulnerable young girl or a hardened ex-con pulling off one more heist, will keep you turning the pages, desperate to find out what happens next. If you enjoy mystery, crime, or suspense, this collection offers a delicious sampler platter of different styles and subgenres. Recommended for all fans of mysteries and thrillers, as well as anyone wanting to get a taste of contemporary American fiction.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

CONTENTS


◼️"Foreward" - Otto Penzler


◼️"Introduction" - Jonathan Lethem


◼️Fiction:

▪️"Coach O" - Robert Hinderlite
▪️"The Keeper of All Sins" - Sharon Hunt
▪️"Open House" - Reed Johnson
▪️"A Damn Fine Town" - Arthur Klepchukov
▪️"The Walk-in" - Harley Jane Kozak
▪️"Top Ten Vacation Selfies of YouTube Stars" - Preston Lang
▪️"Mastermind" - Jared Lipof
▪️"That Donnelly Crowd" - Anne Therese MacDonald
▪️"The Clown" - Mark Mayer
▪️"Interpreting America Gothic" -
Rebecca McKanna
▪️"Hannah-Beast" - Jennifer McMahon
▪️"The Archivist" - Joyce Carol Oates
▪️"A Box of Hope" - Brian Panowich
▪️"Payback" - Tonya D. Price
▪️"If You Say So" - Suzanne Proulx
▪️"Neighbors" - Ron Rash
▪️"Faint of Heart" - Amanda Rea
▪️"Lush" - Duane Swierczynski
▪️"Inside Man" - Robb T. White
▪️"Burning Down the House" - Ted White


◼️"Contributors' Notes"


◼️"Other Distinguished Mystery Stories of 2018"


This is the twenty-third volume in The Best American Mystery Stories series. All mystery and crime stories published in the United States and Canada in print or online during the calendar year are eligible for inclusion. Each year, Otto Penzler, the series editor, chooses what he feels are the fifty best mystery stories of that year. These are then given to a "guest editor," an author renowned in the mystery field who further winnows them down to twenty stories that are included in the book. The other thirty stories that Penzler had chosen appear on a list at the back of the book, designated as "Other Distinguished Mystery Stories" of that year.

Penzler's definition of "mystery story" is very broad; he includes not only traditional mystery stories but also any story "in which a crime, or the threat of a crime, is central to the theme or plot." Penzler's Forewards to the volumes of this series are all very simple and very similar, with much of the material repeated from year to year.

This year the guest editor is Jonathan Lethem, author of eleven novels, including Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude. Lethem's "Introduction" is more interesting than many of those in preceding volumes of the series. Much of it is a paean to the first mystery writer that he knew personally, the great Stanley Ellin.

As usual, the stories come from a wide variety of sources. This year there is only one story from each of the two long-standing print mystery periodicals, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. The only sources of more than one story are an anthology, False Faces: Twenty Stories About the Masks We Wear, edited by Warren Hammond and Angie Hodapp, and a periodical, Down & Out: The Magazine; there are two stories from each of these. The other stories come from other periodicals and anthologies.

The "Contributors' Notes" in the back of the book are always fascinating. They include information about each author and comments by the authors about their stories. Some of the comments are quite brief, some longer. There is much sadness in the fiction in this book, but I think that the saddest thing here is the comments by two of the authors about deaths in their families.

All the books in the series tend to be dark in tone. Many of the stories in this 2019 volume might be regarded as noir fiction; at least one is a flat-out non-supernatural horror tale.

I think most of the fiction is good. I dislike the horror story I mentioned, "Hannah-Beast" by Jennifer McMahon, simply because it is horrific; it is, I think, quite good of its kind, though.

Robb T. White's comments about his extremely violent story "Inside Man" say that the story is intended to be "jocular." I did not find it so. The hard-boiled prose seems almost satirical to me, although I doubt that was what was intended. For example:

The Triangle was Tom's kind of bar, a shitkicker dive, your basic country-western with way too much steel guitar; whiny notes poured from the speakers, the same raggedy-assed looking crowd packed tight on the same stools. Some tattooed trailer-trash taking a break from popping out babies with violent boyfriends gyrated in an orange bikini onstage and gave hump-sex to a shiny pole slimed with sweat and even more bacteria.

"Lush" by Duane Swierczynski is another violent tale, but this time much of the humor works. A story of an American spy in Poland, captured by...well, who knows? The captors are cruel but the spy is talented - and the spy has a remarkable ability to handle alcohol. And how many spies nowadays would consider ordering a Gibson?

I suspect that I may be missing something in Arthur Klepchukov's "A Damn Fine Town." The main character and narrator in this brief tale is a former police officer who seems to have taken up a very different line of work. But who is the man with the suitcase and the Rolex watch without hands? This is intriguing, but left me puzzled.

"If You Say So" by Suzanne Proulx is as traditional a noir story as you could find, in which a young man meets a mysterious and enticing woman. This is told well, but it has already been told many times previously.

There is no crime committed in "Coach O" by Robert Hinderliter, but there is the "threat of a crime" mentioned above. A high school football coach finds his personal and professional life threatened, and considers what action to take.

There appears to me to be no crime or threat of a crime at all in "Neighbors" by Ron Rash, but there is a war going on. A woman alone with her two sons in North Carolina in the American Civil War finds danger all about her. I think that this is a fine tale but I have no idea why it is included as a mystery story.

"The Keepers of All Sins" by Sharon Hunt tells of the men of three generations of one family who died by drowning, and the women who were with them, with special attention to the girlfriend of the third of these men.

Ted White is certainly better known for his work in the field of science fiction, as both author and editor, than he is for his mystery writing, but his story "Burning Down the House" combines both of those. In a future time, the wealthy and the poor are totally at odds, with people in the slums being murdered with impunity by minions of the rich. A young woman agrees to go to the apartment of a wealthy man, without knowing precisely what he wants. This is a mistake for both of them. (The title of the story is also the title of a song by Talking Heads, which links White's love of music with his love of science fiction.)

The comic tale "Top Ten Vacation Selfies of YouTube Stars" by Preston Lang is narrated by a former newspaper reporter who briefly takes on another career, one that is more lucrative but considerably less legal. But being able to pay the bills does have an effect on morality.

"The Walk-In" by Harley Jane Kozak is another comic story, but a most unusual one. The first sentence of the story is, "It's not every day that you walk into your apartment and find your cat has turned into a dog." Then things get much stranger. An American woman in London meets a man whose feats of ratiocination would dumbfound Sherlock Holmes.

Jared Lipof's "Mastermind" is yet another comic story, in which some schoolboys in 1982 begin to suspect that a new neighbor is an escaped bank robber, one for whom a ten thousand dollar reward is being offered. Their families and their English teacher are perhaps unrealistically patient with the boys, but 1982 was a very different (and possibly kinder) time.

None of the remaining stories are comic at all. The title of Mark Mayer's "The Clown" sounds like the story might be funny, but it is far from it. The central character is a real estate salesman, who has plans to become a knife-wielding homicidal clown. Then he meets a sympathetic woman and plans change - somewhat.

"Interpreting American Gothic" by Rebecca McKanna is about a young woman who works at the American Gothic House in Iowa, the house that is shown in Grant Wood's famous painting. She begins a correspondence with an imprisoned serial killer, and that changes her life.

In 1983, the female narrator of "That Donnelly Crowd" by Anne Therese MacDonald flees from Los Angeles, leaving behind her drugs, stocks and bonds, and the man whom she was to marry on the following day. She wants "to live only in hushed rains and sleep with gentle people." She says, "I needed God not to find me." She goes to Ireland and promptly meets a man - the man - "an international computer specialist with an apartment in Germany, a house in London, an ex-wife in Sweden, a spinster sister in Dublin, an IRA brother buried in a rebel's grave." She marries him days after they meet. And if God doesn't find her, karma does.

A divorced father and his young daughter have found an activity they can share on their scant time together in "Open House" by Reed Johnson. They go to real estate open houses, in which the father pretends to be rich. It is fun, and no harm is done - until the father is accused of stealing from one of the homes they visit. This has a particularly fine last paragraph.

I have not actually checked, but I am almost certain that the person who has had the most stories in this series is Joyce Carol Oates. In the touching story "The Archivist," a young girl is repeatedly molested by her math teacher. This would be one of the best stories in this collection, but I have reservations about the teacher being a rabid white supremacist and a great fan of Adolf Hitler. I would like to believe that white supremacists are all sexual predators as well, that they are evil in every way, but I doubt that is true. Oates does not say that all white supremacists are sexually maladjusted (or that all sexually maladjusted people are white supremacists), but I think she makes the teacher a little too easy to despise, as if being a child molester would not make him sufficiently evil.

"Faint of Heart" by Amanda Rea deals with another person who commits crimes against children. The main character is a single woman living with her father who is in her first serious romantic relationship. She comes across a little girl who had escaped from a young man who had tried to kill the girl and her brother. Both children lived. The woman who found the little girl becomes obsessed with the incident, and her whole life is changed.

Another woman has her life altered by a violent incident in "Payback" by Tonya D. Price. A woman is outside her house, in which her husband and daughter are sleeping, when she sees two teenage boys in a car trying to shoot a dog which is fleeing from them. She throws a rock at the car and breaks a window. The boys determine to exact vengeance, and the woman must act to protect her family and herself. The action that she takes will haunt her forever.

"A Box of Hope" by Brian Panowich is a powerful story of a fifteen year old boy whose father dies suddenly. At the funeral, the boy meets his uncle, his father's brother, for the first time. His uncle explains that the boy's father had always been the good son; the uncle had not. Although the brothers still loved each other and spoke occasionally, they no longer saw each other in person. The uncle says he wants to be part of the boy's life from then on. The last paragraph of the story suddenly throws a different light on everything that had gone before.

I think that most of these stories are good. I would particularly recommend those by Reed Johnson, Harley Jane Kozak, Preston Lang, Jared Lipof, Anne Therese MacDonald, Rebecca McKanna, Brian Panowich, Tonya D. Price, and Amanda Rea.

[Peter Sidell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was happy to discover this j was already out in October. Somehow I found fewer of the stories grabbed me this year. Recognizably I change with aging and the genre evolves to. Still there are plenty of stories in it I found to be first rate. And I was prompted to buy a novel by one of the authors.
That is one of the pleasures of the collection, it introduces me to new authors and their work.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mystery stories here are defined as any fiction in which a crime or threat of a crime is central to the plot. Detective stories are only one type of mystery story; others include romantic suspense, espionage, legal legerdemain, medical thriller, political duplicity or any story told from the villain's point of view.

None of the stories in this volume are detective fiction. As the series editor says in the Foreword, they depict people in desperate straits doing desperate things and making poor choices.

Some of these stories (e.g. Coach O; Faint of Heart), I found, very well written with nuanced development of characters who were interesting. Others (e.g. Lush) seemed to be one dimensional narratives that didn't generate any interest. The best of the lot is The Archivist by Joyce Carol Oates.

[Pranay Dharmale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coach O: 3.5/5

The Keepers of All Sins: 2/5

Open House: 3/5

A Damn Fine Town: 3/5

The Walk-in: 4.5/5

Top 10 selfies: 4/5

Mastermind: 3/5

That Donnelly Crowd: 3.5/5

The Clown: 4/5

Interpreting American Gothic: 4/5

Hannah-Beast: 5/5

The Archivist: 4/5

A Box of Hope: 4/5

Payback: 4.5/5

If you say so: 4.5/5

Neighbors: 4/5

Faint of Heart: 3/5

Lush: 4.5/5inside Man: 4/5

Burning down the house: 4/5

[Jim Teggelaar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Better than average crime collection. Generally anything Otto Penzler has his name on is worth picking up. The best of the best are stories by Arthur Klepchukov, Harley Jane Kozak, Suzanne Proulx, Amanda Ray and Ted White.

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

People who think that all mystery stories are pretty much alike haven't read this excellent collection. Every story is well written and creative. i liked some more than others, but only because of personal taste.

[Summer Zee · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.3

[Jill]

I love Best American Short Stories collections and I like mysteries so I figured I’d give this series a try. But they define mystery as any story in which a crime is committed. The writing is good in all the stories and in that rubric, they’re great, but I was more interested in intrigue than crime. So I gave up.

[Erin Porter · Rating 1 out of 5]

Overall, I cannot recommend this book. While I want to excuse it as lazy editing, by the end of the book, I had no choice but to believe that it purposely only represented a narrow slice of american culture, namely white and low-to-upper middle class suburbia, and thus comes off as racist and misogynist.
Some quick positive notes:
- I appreciated the forward and his explanation of how the pieces were chosen and his definition of what a mystery short story is. Notably, I had looked at the list of previous editors, and felt that there was a good amount of women. I have not googled everyone on that list to see if anyone is non-white.
- This book is not a terrible anthology because the stories are bad. The stories are all well-written, interesting, include a few surprises, and I’m now inspired to dive into civil war fiction novels.

Here is what I found appalling about this book:
- Absolutely no stories from a native american perspective. And this is a mystery book! You can tell me that no mystery short stories written by native americans were published in 2018 and my response to that is GROSS! I want more narratives from native americans and I want editors and publishers to make it a priority.
- Ok, so no native americans, there are probably at least two or three written by a black person. 3/4ths through book, ok at least one?! Finished book and thought maybe I heard the voice of a nonwhite character in there but googled every author’s name and was angered. Angered that two white men would publish a book of 20 stories and not include a single person of color, not black, Asian, hispanic, Indian. What is “American” without at least a touch of ethnicity?! The most they experiment with culture is European and American is so much more than European culture.
- Ok, so no POC, maybe they at least represent women well. Firstly, the stories written by women are the best in the book and there are 9 out of 20. However, no, this book represents women as either weak or victims. They are strong victims; I have a very clear picture of Rebecca and her children in my mind and liked that she burned her burn down. However, given the editor’s inclusive definition of the mystery genre, he chose many stories that use the trope of violence against women.

This will be my final piece of criticism: the book is filled with trope and brings nothing new to the genre of mystery.

I will end with this: I’m angered as an American that this represents the best of our mystery short stories. The best only includes one specific narrative that positions women as weak and men as macho??? Its so 1980’s ... 1800’s ... roman trash and we’ve been reading it all for too long. This book didn’t anger me because of the tragedy inside the stories but because of the tragedy of thinking one narrative could cover the diverse and dynamic voices that make up America.

[Mrs. Read · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well. I’ve been reading the Best American Mystery Stories series from its onset, and I can say that the 2019 edition is one of a kind. I’ve nothing against what I loosely characterize as New Yorker stories; I also read Best American Short Stories annually and I know in advance that I’ll be confronted with more offerings from the likes of Zoetrope, Ploughshares, and New Ohio Review than you can shake a stick at. But when I pick up a collection of self-identified "Mystery Stories", I expect the contents to be - wait for it - mystery stories written by - this one should be easier - mystery story writers. This ain’t them.

[AJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first time I've read this annual anthology, plus it's a genre I don't typically delve into, except in film. So in terms of an overarching experience, it was a mixed bag. The stories were certainly readable and, on some levels, usually enjoyable. I appreciated the presence of a plot-driven story (in contrast with some of the tougher literary reads I've more recently encountered). On the flip side, some that linger in the mind only do so for the reason horror movies are successful: shock. These were few, but still. And finally, right in the middle, I'm totally neutral over the fact that most stories were not what I would conventionally call mysteries. More accurately, most was crime fiction. Even then, that has to be loosely applied because one story (Box of Hope) had no crime, only the hint of future crime.

That latter story, by the way, I found soppy and sentimental and cliched (son loses father, black sheep brother turns up building bridges and pulling heartstrings). My favourite, hands down, was Amanda Rea's Faint of Heart (not a great title), about a woman whose entire life is marked and thus altered after she discovers a terrified young girl hiding in her backyard doghouse. The subtle effects it stamps on her life initially, as she remains unable to let go of the event, become more significant, like a rift in her that likely would have torn but is now ripped wide, and it ripples through to change the course of her life, yet she can't let go.

I'd like to read another year's anthology in this series at some point just for comparison.

Interpreting American Gothic was also quietly suspenseful, and I liked the humour if not the whole story of The Walk-In. If You Say So, about a wealthy beautiful woman toying with a naive young man was a compelling read with a twisty ending. A couple of stories were simply action sequences with only the slightest semblance of character to be interested in. But for me, the most disappointing story was by the most fabled writer, Joyce Carol Oates. It reads like true crime, which would be fine, if still not quite my bag, except that it's about a serial child sex abuser. It's a lengthy story, ostensibly to understand the young girl's reluctance to testify (we know at the outset that her abuser was caught). I just found this painful to read, and ended up skipping chunks of it, because I simply had no need to be persuaded of the young girl's ongoing trauma and the warped effect it might have on her. To me, the story felt exploitative.

[Reggie Billingsworth · Rating 1 out of 5]

These are NOT "mystery" stories. In his Foreward, series editor Otto Penzler himself whinges an apology claiming that "the psychology of crime has become the dominant form of mystery fiction" now supplants the "classic tale of deduction" of former years. Bollocks.

After sampling 4-5 of these short stories, I found no mystery, no intrigue and definitely no entertainment... just tales of gruesome and depressing personality conflicts and internal monologues of angst that altogether seem to make up most of the contemporary American novelistic dreck.

In another crucial admission, Otto also declares the obvious: mystery stories are difficult to write. It requires plotting, planning, decent logical exercise etc etc you know...CRAFT i.e. the Hard Work of a gifted puzzle maker. What are the excuses for the abandonment of the 'old school' type of mystery? Well gee, how can we conjure more original motivations, different murder methods, vital clue obfuscation? It's just too hard and apparently too high an expectation.

But wait a minute...that's the mystery writer's job isn't it? So...is that whining entitlement I hear? In other words, more recent writers who wish to claim the mystery genre would prefer to just vomit up gruesome pathological psychology than create an actual puzzle to dismantle.

I'll stick to those who adhere to the Old School and thankfully there are still plenty out there to enjoy. You just won't find them anywhere in this collection.

[Kristin · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were some good stories in here; there were some less good ones. But, to my mind, this didn't deliver on the title. The cover promised "mystery stories," but the definition of the series author, as he's described it in the foreward, doesn't even use the word mystery outside of the label:

The working definition of a mystery story for this series is any work of fiction in which a crime, or the threat of a crime, is central to the theme or the plot.

And, the presence or the absence of crime says nothing to me about the presence or absence of mystery. If you want an anthology of crime fiction, this is fine, but… it doesn't fit the label, at least as I understood the label.

[Lauren Stotts · Rating 4 out of 5]

strong selection! i'm not really a mystery fan, so i'm not going to do an in-depth review for this, but i appreciate the thought and consideration that went into this anthology. mystery as a genre spans so much more than the sherlock-y, agatha christie whodunit stuff, which is the kind of thing i was expecting before i got into it. this is not that kind of mystery collection. if you like thrillers and/or very light horror i would say that this is the stuff for you.

[Cbg · Rating 2 out of 5]

I actually had to turn the book over, halfway through, to see on the cover if this was REALLY the Best American MYSTERY stories... as I found them, yes, stories and little mystery about them. I have ready many of this mystery series. And there are The Best American Short Stories books out there. I wasn't sure if I had misread the title. But, yes, the word mystery was in the title. A mystery to me.

[Bill · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disappointing

Having read the best mystery stories compilation with Louise Penny, I thought I’d stumbled onto a treasure series of curated bliss. This collection, though, is a bitter disappointment. The stories are more horror or human suffering than mystery. Dark and disturbing. Perhaps to my own loss, I abandoned the just past the midpoint. I’ll try another compilation but will be far more wary before diving in.

[C. Adam Volle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why not just call the series “The Best American Crime Stories” if all the tales have crime in common instead of mystery?

Anyway most of the stories are good—or you can understand why someone else thought they were good—with the exceptions of Hinderliter’s “Coach O” and Panowich’s “Box of Hope,” which are just vignettes (and “Box of Hope” scarcely includes crime as an element). Those mar the collection.

[Lauren Dandridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the stories in this anthology were great, some weren’t as interesting to me. My favorites (in order of appearance) were:
-“Top Ten Vacation Selfies of YouTube Stars” by Preston Lang
-“Interpreting American Gothic” by Rebecca McKanna
-“Hannah-Beast” by Jennifer McMahon
-“A Box of Hope” by Brian Panowich
-“If You Say So” by Suzanne Proulx

[Mary Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorite Stories:

"The Keeper of All Sins" - Sharon Hunt
"The Clown" - Mark Mayer
"Hannah-Beast" - Jennifer McMahon
"The Archivist" - Joyce Carol Oates (this one was my favorite all around, and the most powerful in my opinion)
"Faint of Heart" - Amanda Rea
"Burning Down the House" - Ted White

[Shannon M (Canada) · Rating 1 out of 5]

I always look forward to the Best American Mystery Story collection. In each collection there are some I like a lot, some I feel lukewarm about, and some that I don’t like at all. Not this collection. I hated them all except one, and that one wasn’t great. There were no mystery stories and a few thrillers but the majority of the stories were strictly MFA tryouts.

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. These stories were more in the vein of horror/ strange and unsettling more than mysteries in the traditional sense. As with other compilations, I think an editor plays a strong role in the overall tone of the collection, so I’d like to read another collection to see if I like it better than this one.

[Deborah Gaspar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mystery short stories

Some of these short stories are more psychological thrillers and some are written more intellectually. I prefer the later. This set of stories didn't capture me as well as past editions of this book have. I would have enjoyed a better variety of stories.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection was a mixed bag. I wouldn't say any of the stories were actually mysteries. Some thrillers, some suspense, a spy story. A couple were excellent, but just as many were bad enough I had to skim them just to get through them.

[Sandy Lane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love short story reading and I love a great mystery. Although the stories were all well written, they all fell into the psychological thriller/sci fi category which left me overall disappointed. I am going to read Joyce Carol Oates' year as editor 2005 to see if this is more of my expectation.

[Carla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good collection of mystery stories, with a noticeably subtler tone than usual... that makes sense to me with Jonathem Lethem as the editor, and of course there is a very wide variety of stories that fall into the category of “mystery” in any case.

[Mitsuru · Rating 2 out of 5]

It wasn't enjoyable, because it wasn't included few of proper mystery works I like the following stories:
"Open House" by Reed Johnson, "The Walk-In" by Harley Jane Kozak, "Payback" by Tonya D. Price,
"Burning Down the House" by Ted White.

[Michelle Hanchett · Rating 1 out of 5]

Garbage

One star because a zero star rating is not possible. An anthology of stories dominated by the disgusting, poorly written scribblings of perverted hacks. Don't waste your time. Penzler is better than this; Lethem obviously is not.