The search has already begun for suitable stories for next year’s edition. To qualify, a story must be — duh — a mystery, by which I mean any work of fiction in which a crime, or the threat of a crime, is integral to the theme or plot. It must be written by an American or Canadian and have had its first publication in the calendar year of 2008 in an American or Canadian publication. If you are the author of such a work, or its editor, or any interested party (your credentials will not be reviewed), please feel free to submit it. Every word of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine is read, and it is unlikely that we will miss a story published in an anthology entirely devoted to mystery stories, so there is no need to call these to our attention. If the story was first published online, only hard copies will be read; these must include the name of the e-zinc, the date on which it was published, and contact information. No unpublished stories are eligible, for what should be obvious reasons. Submitted material will not be returned. If you do not trust the U.S. Postal Service to deliver the book, magazine, or tear sheets, please enclose a self-addressed post card to receive confirmation.
The earlier submissions are received, the less hurriedly will they be read. If your story is one of fifty or sixty or more delivered during Christmas week, it may not receive quite the same respectful reading as those submitted in less crowded months. Because of the unforgiving deadlines necessarily imposed on a work of this nature, the absolute deadline for receiving material is December 31. This is not an arrogant or whimsical date, but is essential in order for production schedules to be met. If it arrives on January 2, it will not be read. Sorry.
Submissions should be sent to Otto Penzler, The Mysterious Bookshop, 58 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007.
O. P.
Introduction
Recently I was asked by Otto Penzler, the series editor of this collection, to come up to Manhattan and do a reading at his store, The Mysterious Bookshop, in Tribeca. The event was to promote a huge volume of classic pulp stories that Otto had edited, Black Mask-era work from the likes of Dashiell Hammett, Cornell Woolrich, James M. Cain, Erie Stanley Gardner, Horace McCoy, and many others. Initially I was looking to read something obscure and promote an underappreciated writer, but in the end I went with a selection from Raymond Chandler’s “Red Wind,” perhaps his most beloved short story. To read Chandler to an audience in New York was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me, and I took it. Here’s the famous first paragraph of “Red Wind”:
There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.
Beautiful, right?
After the reading, I spoke with many of the people who had come to the event. One of them opined that “Red Wind” might have been the best thing Chandler had ever written, as the short fiction form had forced him to focus and had prevented him from meandering and losing his grip on plot, one of the few negatives critics have cited when commenting on his novels. “Red Wind” is a remarkable short story, though at fifty-seven pages (my Ballantine paperback edition from 1977) it stretches the definition of “short.” I don’t know that it can be called Chandler’s best (for me, it’s The Long Goodbye, hands down), but then “best” is subjective, up to and including the contents of the book you are holding in your hands.
Now would be an appropriate time to explain how the stories in this volume came to be chosen. The mechanics went like this: Otto Penzler and his esteemed associate combed through hundreds of crime/mystery stories published during the year and came up with fifty candidates deemed to be of the highest quality. The fifty were sent to me in a cardboard box, and I read them. From the fifty, I chose twenty stories. Biographies were not supplied. I am friendly with a couple of the writers, and know the names of several others, but I was not acquainted whatsoever with the majority of the authors whom I chose. Don’t know their race, ethnicity, political persuasion, or shoe size, and in some cases could not determine their gender. I chose the stories that I enjoyed reading the most and that I hoped you would enjoy, too.
Having said that, I was asked to be the editor, and took the invitation seriously, so naturally the stories I selected are representative of the type of prose I generally read. What you will be reading here has a degree of realism to it. I liked the characters and recognized something in them that rang true. The writing, I promise you, is good, thoughtful writing.
Which brings me to my next point. There is another book out there, from the same publisher as this one, called The Best American Short Stories. I would contend that several stories in this collection are among the best American short stories of the year. So why two books? The short answer is marketing. There are folks who fancy themselves too erudite to try a volume of mystery stories. They believe that one is mere entertainment, and the other is good for you. It’s my opinion that any kind of reading is good for you but, rather than reopen the literary-versus-genre can of worms, I will again defer to Raymond Chandler, from a section of his landmark essay “The Simple Art of Murder”:
As for “literature of expression” and “literature of escape” — this is critic’s jargon, a use of abstract words as if they had absolute meanings. Everything written with vitality expresses that vitality: there are no dull subjects, only dull minds. Ml men who read escape from something else into what lies behind the printed page; the quality of the dream may be argued, but its release has become a functional necessity. All men must escape at times from the deadly rhythms of their private thoughts. It is part of the process of life among thinking beings. It is one of the things that distinguish them from the three-toed sloth; he apparently — one can never be quite sure — is perfectly content hanging upside down on a branch, not even reading Walter Lippmann. I hold no particular brief for the detective story as the ideal escape. I merely say that all reading for pleasure is escape, whether it be Greek, mathematics, astronomy, Benedetto Croce, or the Diary of the Forgotten Man. To say otherwise is to be an intellectual snob, and a juvenile at the art of living.
Damn, he’s good.
I’ve leaned pretty hard on Raymond Chandler for this introduction, and there’s a reason for that. Chandler, and the teacher who turned me on to his books, pretty much changed the course of my life.
I was a senior at the University of Maryland when I took a college course called Hardboiled Detective Fiction (ENGL 379X), an elective that I used to fill out my schedule, an easy three credits on the home stretch to graduation. I recall the syllabus course description as “read and discuss paperback novels.” which sounded like something I could do, despite the fact that I was not even a casual reader of novels at the time.
The teacher was a bearded, bearish fellow named Charles C. Mish, an accomplished, intelligent man who did not look down his nose at the subject matter but rather sought to give us an appreciation of what he considered to be an important, uniquely American art. Twice a week he paced the aisles of our classroom, paperback rolled in his meaty fist, converting us with his enthusiasm and energy. I learned later that he was in Dutch with his academic colleagues for treating crime fiction with the same reverence as one would the classics. It made me like him even more.