– O. P.
sara paretsky
Whether it's wanted or not, or whether it's fair, or appropriate, or pleasing to the subjects, some authors cannot be mentioned without another coming to mind. Ham-mett and Chandler. Sayers and Christie. Paretsky and Grafton.
One of those odd confluences of timing and circumstance brought two books to the world in the same year-1982: Indemnity Only and "A" Is for Alibi. Only those few years ago, now seemingly another lifetime, and the strong, independent, female private eye awakened half the readers in America to want books about V. I. Warshawski and Kinsey Milhone and their literary progeny (and the other half to write them, it seems).
Yes, Marcia Muller created Sharon McCone nearly a decade earlier, and P. D. James demonstrated that Cordelia Gray was the equal (or more) of any male gumshoe, but it was the combination of Grafton and Paretsky that catapulted the female detective into the most popular and widely read character of the 1980s, an appetite that has not diminished to the present day.
This is not a V. I. Warshawski story, but one that reveals a hitherto unknown talent on the part of the much acclaimed mystery writer: had she set her sights in a different direction, she could have been a highly successful writer of Harlequin Romances. (This, in case you didn't get it, is a joke.)
– O. P.
anne perry
It is the last decade of the twentieth century, and the sensations associated with love have changed little over the ages. However, the conventions of love-its manners and mores-have shifted and mutated dramatically from one era to the next. Which is why, when the queen of the Victorian mystery novel, Anne Perry, delivers a delicious little puzzle with its origins in the nuances of respectable nineteenth-century courtship, careful attention must be paid to love's past and not its present. What may seem merely quaint today, when a man's word or a woman's honor apparently has no more than casual value, was once a matter of deadly importance.
In a world of discreet butlers, polished silver trays, and cravats "tied to perfection, " Anne Perry is a peerless companion, as consummate an eavesdropper on this vanished, fascinating society as the blackmailer of her title.
Already one of the most popular mystery writers of the past couple of decades, the author has received enormous-if unwanted-attention for her recently discovered and revealed past. As a teenager in New Zealand, she and her best friend murdered the friend's mother while under the influence of a subsequently banned prescription drug. Her exemplary life since then has produced nothing more notorious than fictional violence that has brought her a vast readership.
– O. P.
shel silverstein
For anyone who ever dreamed of creating stories, or poems, of drawing, or writing songs and plays, but couldn't quite find the originality of expression that set them apart from the pedestrian, Shel Silverstein is their worst nightmare.
When he is asked to write the lyrics for a song, he needs no more than fifteen minutes. A play might need an entire weekend. When I asked him to write a story for this book, he said, "Well, I've never written a crime story in my life. Wait, I have an idea. " He never paused for a breath between those two sentences. The fable that follows, not a story in the traditional form, is that idea. In his various homes, he has drawers full of songs and stories and fables and drawings and plays and poems that he's never gotten around to sending to his agent or his publishers. When he focused long enough to put together a book of his short pieces, it immediately made The New York Times bestseller list. Not for two weeks. Not for two months. The Light in the Attic stayed on the list for more than two years!
Shel Silverstein offered to write another piece if I compiled another anthology someday. I said, "What if you can't come up with an idea?'' He looked absolutely baffled by the notion.
– O. P.
donna tartt
A problem common to many lauded novels by the new generation of writers is lack of story. While we may not always like the principal characters, they are well drawn and fully realized. The dialogue may be brittle and frequently predictable, but it is crisp and true. Places and ambience come into plain view, even if they are not necessarily where we would choose to be. But nothing happens. The tales move along on a long stretch of road and then stop. The whole experience is as satisfying as one of those food bars consumed by astronauts. One tasted like steak and supplied the same nutrients, but it wasn't the real thing. Neither was the bar that tasted like chocolate ice cream.
Donna Tartt's first novel, The Secret History, on the other hand, is the real thing. All the terrific writing of other talented English majors, sure, but a real story too: a plot-that great rarity among "serious" writers of contemporary fiction. And, no less important, a good plot.
The author is not a fast writer, so there has been no book to follow that huge initial success. Even her short stories take ages to produce.
As an admirer of her work, I wanted Donna Tartt to be in this book. The inflexible rule was that all stories had to be original, written especially for this book. We winked at the rule, as this is a poem. It had previously been read by about eleven subscribers to the Oxford Review.
– O. P.
OTTO PENZLER
OTTO PENZLER owns the Mysterious Bookshop in New York City and founded the Mysterious Press and Otto Penzler Books. He has written and edited several books, including the Edgar® Award-winning Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection and the anthologies Murder Is My Racquet and Dangerous Women. He is also the series editor of the annual Best American Mystery Stories of the Year.