The World's Finest Mystery and Crime Stories

Starred review from October 14, 2002
There might be some undiscovered gem of a short story published in 2001 that didn't make it into this impressively eclectic third annual collection, but it's hard to see how it slipped under the eagle-eyed radar of editors Gorman and Greenberg (and their deputies Larry Segriff and John Helfers, credited in the dedication as the people "who do 99 percent of the work"). The lively mix ranges from works by the usual prolific novelist suspects—S.J. Rozan, Ed McBain, Joyce Carol Oates, Jeffery Deaver, Donald E. Westlake, Ruth Rendell, Bill Pronzini, Marcia Muller, Val McDermid—to the welcome return of names (like Joseph Hansen and Clark Howard) not seen often enough on book jackets of late. Howard's story, "The California Contact," has enough rich material for a novel—including a hero who would rather be a boxer than a cop, a hit man called "the Leper" who "could not be identified by fingerprinting because all of his prints and part of several fingers had been eaten away by leprosy," and a beautifully orchestrated finale at Disneyland. Carolyn Wheat's "The Only Good Judge" offers a complicated, Hitchcockian plot, in which three villains commit each other's crimes, as well as some valuable wisdom about the erroneous image of judges as shaped by the Law & Order
TV series. With seven fact-and-opinion-packed reports on the world crime fiction scene, this anthology contains enough high quality reading material to sustain any genre addict's habit.

August 4, 2003
Editors Gorman and Greenberg serve up an impressive compendium of 42 short stories culled from magazines, newspapers and anthologies published last year. The 11 non-English entries tend to disappoint, with the notable exception of German writer Stephan Rykena's "Cold-Blooded," a clever tale about a determined refugee. Familiar names among the English contributors include Val McDermid, who spins a wry story of revenge in "The Wagon Mound," and Ralph McInerney, who plumbs human nature in his brilliant "The Devil That Walks at Noonday." Anne Perry, Gillian Linscott and Carole Nelson Douglas employ Shakespearean themes, while Sharyn McCrumb, Jon L. Breen and Daniel Stashower utilize Sherlockian material. Susan Isaac offers practically the only story with a light touch, "My Cousin Rachel's Uncle Murray." Mike Doogan turns Dashiell Hammett into a sleuth in "War Can Be Murder," while Lillian Stewart Carl's "A Mimicry of Mockingbirds" does the same for Thomas Jefferson. Essays assessing the state of the mystery in 2002 in the U.S., Britain, Canada and Germany provide both insights and plenty of suggestions for further reading pleasure. This is an entertaining and valuable guide to a strong and diverse genre.

September 20, 2004
Gorman and Greenberg's hefty and satisfyingly diverse anthology gathers 32 crime stories first published in 2003, along with six succinct introductory surveys of the mystery scene for that year. The opener, Kathyrn Rusch's low-key yet arresting "Cowboy Grace Kristine," tells of a wallflower who leaves town to make a new life, only to be tracked down for a crime she didn't know she was involved with. Anthony Mann's hilarious "Esther Gordon Framlingham" sends up the genre, as a writer desperately attempts to sell his agent on a new mystery series concept, offering, among other ideas for a hero, "A dominant Neanderthal male at the time of the Cro-Magnon." The agent responds: "Marlene Trent's Ug Oglog novels. You mean to say you don't know them?" Other stories range from Elizabeth Foxwell's gritty "No Man's Land," set in the female ambulance corps in WWI, and David Edgerly Gates's western thriller "Aces & Eights," to Liza Cody's postmodern "Woke Up This Morning." A few tales are less compelling, such as Edward Hoch's "The Face of Ali Baba," in which the hunt for an Osama bin Laden figure uses trivial clues from the Arabian Nights
. Veteran crime writers Jeremiah Healy, Joyce Carol Oates, Sharyn McCrumb, Clark Howard and John Lutz also highlight this impressive new addition to the series.

Starred review from October 29, 2001
The first 50 pages of this giant volume are packed with valuable and fascinating material—and you haven't even gotten to the stories yet. Jon L. Breen's roundup of the year 2000 in mystery and crime fiction is a deft and compact survey that manages to be both personal and wide-ranging. Edward D. Hoch's "yearbook" is equally idiosyncratic as well as most useful, while reports from such foreign parts as Great Britain, Australia, Canada, Germany and the Republic of Mystery Fandom are fascinating. As for the stories (41 different entries from 35 writers, plus a Pete Hamill New Yorker
profile of Evan Hunter, which seems a bit out of place), they literally provide something for every mystery taste. There are double helpings from Kristine Kathryn Rusch (now writing a fine series as Kris Nelscott), as well as from Brendan DuBois, Clark Howard, Mat Coward, Edward D. Hoch and Jan Burke. Other fine writers—from Doug Allyn to S.J. Rozan—have standout single stories. "The Sleeping Detective," by Gary Phillips, could well stand as a perfect example of the pleasures to be found by reading (if not carrying around in a backpack) this weighty second annual collection from two smart and hard-working editors. Phillips puts his Los Angeles detective and donut shop owner Ivan Monk into a waking dream that manages to incorporate so many other mystery films, novels, TV and radio shows that it should be part of a test to see how deep your genre knowledge goes. (Dec. 18)Forecast:An improvement over last year's selection, this is excellent value for the money. Crime aficionados will want both this volume and the rival
Best American Mystery Stories 2001 (Forecasts, Sept. 10).