Another similarity from the first book to the twentieth has been the quest to have the right person serve as the guest editor. Willingness to do this is an act of generosity. Every guest editor for this series has been a national bestseller, and therefore these are authors who are asked to do something virtually every day of their lives: write a story, make a speech, sign a book, visit a bookshop or library, provide a quote for a dust jacket, offer advice about how to be a better writer or a more successful one, attend a conference or convention — the list goes on.
It is with deep gratitude, then, that I applaud Elizabeth George for agreeing to serve in this role for the 2016 edition. She is a number-one best-selling writer, an American whose detective novels are set in England, best known for her superb series featuring Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley, actually Lord Asherton, privately educated (Eton College and Oxford University), and his partner, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, who comes from a working-class background — both from Scotland Yard. George’s first novel, A Great Deliverance, was published in 1988, and there have been eighteen further adventures of Lynley and Havers, as well as four young adult novels and two short story collections.
I also am in debt to previous guest editors; my thanks continue to resonate for James Patterson, Laura Lippman, Lisa Scottoline, Robert Crais, Harlan Coben, Lee Child, Jeffery Deaver, George Pelecanos, Carl Hiaasen, Scott Turow, Joyce Carol Oates, Nelson DeMille, Michael Connelly, James Ellroy, Lawrence Block, Donald E. Westlake, Ed McBain, Sue Grafton, and, of course, Robert B. Parker.
While it is redundant to write it again, since I have already done it in each of the previous nineteen volumes of this series (although it is painful to acknowledge, I do recognize that not everyone reads and memorizes my annual forewords), it is fair warning to state that many people erroneously regard a “mystery” as a detective story. The detective story is important but is only one subgenre of a much bigger literary category, mystery fiction, which I define as any work of fiction in which a crime, or the threat of a crime, is central to the theme or the plot. While I love good puzzles and tales of pure ratiocination, few of these are written today, as the mystery genre has evolved (or devolved, depending on your point of view) into a more character-driven form of literature, with more emphasis on the “why” of a crime’s commission than a “who” or “how.” The line between mystery fiction and general fiction has become more and more blurred in recent years, producing fewer memorable detective stories but more significant literature.
While I engage in a relentless quest to locate and read every mystery/crime/suspense story published, I live in terror that I will miss a worthy story, so if you are an author, editor, or publisher, or care about one, please feel free to send a book, magazine, or tearsheet to me c/o The Mysterious Bookshop, 58 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. If the story first appeared electronically, you must submit a hard copy. It is vital to include the author’s contact information. No unpublished material will be considered, for what should be obvious reasons. No material will be returned. If you distrust the postal service, enclose a self-addressed, stamped postcard and I’ll let you know your submission was received.
To be eligible for next year’s edition, a story must have been written by an American or a Canadian and first published in an American or Canadian publication in the calendar year 2016. The earlier in the year I receive the story, the more fondly I regard it. For reasons known only to the dunderheads who wait until Christmas week to submit a story published the previous spring, this occurs every year, causing serious irritableness as I read a stack of stories while friends trim Christmas trees, shop, meet for lunches and dinners, and otherwise celebrate the holiday season. It had better be a damned good story if you do this. I am being neither arrogant nor whimsical when I state that the absolute firm deadline for me to receive a submission is December 31; it is due to the very tight production schedule for the book. If the story arrives one day later, it will not be read. Sorry.
O.P.
Introduction
When I was asked to choose the twenty best mystery stories published in 2015 and then to write an introduction to the volume that would contain them, I had to think about whether I wanted to take on the task. Not only is it always difficult to choose one peer-written story over another, but it’s also tough to decide whether a tale actually constitutes a mystery story in the first place.
I’ve always seen the mystery as a very particular kind of story, quite distinguishable from a tale of crime. A mystery story, to me, has always been about the game, and the game has always pitted the writer against the reader. The rules of the game are simple. A mystery is unfolded by the writer, and during the unfolding all the clues are set into the various scenes, as are the red herrings. The private investigator, police detective, or amateur sleuth explores the circumstances surrounding some sort of act of malfeasance, possibly experiencing the crime scene itself through photos or a personal encounter with it. Ultimately this investigator arrives at a conclusion that concerns the guilty party, the resolution of the crime, or whatever else will bring the story to a satisfactory close. Part of the denouement of this kind of tale is, of course, an explanation from the investigator, to include an interpretation of the clues and the red herrings. Between the writer and the reader, the game involved is a contest in which the reader attempts to discern the clues, to distinguish them from the red herrings, and to reach a conclusion about the guilty party in advance of the author’s unveiling it all. In the mystery story, neither clues nor red herrings are explained as the story goes along. Frequently they’re not even identified as clues or red herrings. When they’re seen by the fictional investigator, they are noted in passing but never dwelt upon. Because of this, the reader must be astute enough to recognize them for what they are as the writer mentions them in passing. Should the reader sort everything out and identify the killer or thief or kidnapper or whatever, then she wins the game and the author loses. A clever author can keep a reader guessing throughout, but because no explanation of clues and red herrings is necessary in a mystery, not an enormous amount of cleverness on the writer’s part is actually required.
An example of this would be the most infamous mystery novel of all time, written by none other than the grand dame of the Golden Age of Mystery, Agatha Christie. In her controversial novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, she certainly reveals the clues to the reader. Hercule Poirot sees them and he makes careful note of them. But in every case the reader is left in the dark as to what they are or what they mean. The reader has no way of knowing, for example, that the glittering object that Poirot scoops up from the pond is a wedding ring with the initials of two characters engraved upon it, just as the reader doesn’t know that the stranger who came to the house in the days prior to the victim’s murder was a salesman offering a Dictaphone to the soon-to-be-done-away-with Roger Ackroyd. What makes the story so maddening — and so infamous — has to do with the narrator of the piece. He admits in the novel’s conclusion that had he only put an ellipsis instead of a period at the end of a certain sentence, the game would have been up shortly after Mr. Ackroyd’s demise. But he did not do that, Agatha Christie did not do that, and the argument has raged for nearly one hundred years about whether the novel plays fair with the reader.
For me, the larger question has always been this: ellipsis or not, does the novel actually offer an opportunity for the reader to solve the crime in the first place? The answer has to be decidedly no. The reader can certainly guess at it (or, as one of my students once did, write the name of the killer in the margin of his book to spoil the experience for any student following him), but compared to Hercule Poirot, the reader has no real opportunity to work things out, because until the final moments of revelation (along with Poirot’s suggestion that the killer politely commit suicide so as not to disturb people significant in his life), the reader doesn’t have all the information. The reader may be able to sort clues from red herrings, but as to what they mean? As it is said in some parts of the U.S., fuhgeddaboutit.