The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021

by Lee Child (Editor), Otto Penzler (Editor)

Overview

A Wall Street Journal holiday 2021 pick

A Suspense Magazine Best Book of the Year

Lee Child selects the twenty best mystery short stories of the year, including tales by Stephen King, Sara Paretsky, and many more.

Under the auspices of New York City's legendary mystery fiction specialty bookstore, The Mysterious Bookshop, and aided by Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler, international bestseller Lee Child has selected the twenty most suspenseful, most confounding, and most mysterious short stories from the past year, collected now in one entertaining volume.

Includes stories by:

• Alison Gaylin
• David Morrell
• James Lee Burke
• Joyce Carol Oates
• Martin Edwards
• Sara Paretsky
• Stephen King
• Sue Grafton (with a new, posthumously-published work!)

And many more!  

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613162385
Publisher:	Penzler Publishers
Publication date:	09/14/2021
Series:	Best Mystery Stories , #1
Pages:	451
Sales rank:	82,870
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Lee Child is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Jack Reacher thrillers. All his novels have been optioned for major motion pictures, and foreign rights in the Reacher series have sold in one hundred territories. He lives in New York City.

Otto Penzler, the creator of American Mystery Classics, is also the founder of the Mysterious Press (1975); Mysterious Press.com (2011), an electronic-book publishing company; and New York City’s Mysterious Bookshop (1979). He has won a Raven, the Ellery Queen Award, two Edgars (for the Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, 1977, and The Lineup, 2010), and lifetime achievement awards from Noircon and The Strand Magazine. He has edited more than 70 anthologies and written extensively about mystery fiction.

Hometown:

Birmingham, England

Date of Birth:

1954

Place of Birth:

Coventry, England

Education:

Sheffield University

Website:

http://www.leechild.com

Editorial Reviews

★ 07/26/2021

The 20 entries in this superior anthology exhibit the storytelling gifts of authors both familiar and not. In David Morrell’s “Requiem for a Homecoming,” a masterpiece of suspense, two college friends reunite at the scene of a decades-old unsolved murder at their campus’s library in an effort to finally find the truth. Joyce Carol Oates takes readers on an unsettling journey inside the mind of a murderer in “Parole Hearing, California Institution for Women, Chino, CA,” which imagines the thoughts of a fictional disciple of Charles Manson as she appears before a parole board. David Marcum’s “The Adventure of the Home Office Baby,” a convincing Sherlock Holmes pastiche, masters the challenge of centering its plot on espionage rather than homicide. Members of a Manhattan jury become crime victims in Jacqueline Freimor’s ironic and moving “That Which Is True.” In Sue Grafton’s tense “If You Want Something Done Right,” an unpublished story found after her death, a wife is horrified to find that her purse, containing notes about doing away with her husband, has fallen into the wrong hands. This volume is a must for mystery aficionados. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"While a best mystery stories volume can be expected to include many quality works, the editors for this particular piece have outdone themselves. The quality and variety in this collection mean that any reader should find something to enjoy if they appreciate mystery or crime at all. Murder, theft, classic detective and no detective all fit within the short but entertaining volume. Heartily recommended."

A Green Man Review

"It’s no stretch to say these were some of the best short stories from 2020, and the collection is sure to have something for everyone—from those who like traditional mysteries to those who like thrillers or noir stories."

Reviewing the Evidence

"There is such a wide variety here, in terms of literary style and subject matter, that it’s hard to imagine a genre fan who would not find something to treasure. The book belongs on the shelf next to such essential anthologies as the Best American Mystery Stories series and Akashic Books’ voluminous Noir series."

Booklist

08/27/2021

An entertaining selection of the best mystery stories of 2020 (and one reprint by Ambrose Bierce), curated by best-selling thriller novelist Child ("Jack Reacher" series) and Penzler (publisher and proprietor of New York's Mysterious Bookshop). The collection includes a constellation of best-selling authors and a handful of less-familiar names. Stories are a delicious mix of style and subgenre—there isn't a weak link in the bunch. Michael Bracken's "Blest Be the Ties That Bind" is about a newlywed parson threatened by the mob. When things get too hot in 1950s LA, the lines of justice get blurry in Tom Mead's "Heatwave." John Floyd's "Biloxi Bound" features an unexpected antihero. Sue Grafton's posthumously published story "If You Want Something Done Right," with a widow plotting to kill her two-timing husband, is wickedly funny. James Lee Burke's atmospheric "Harbor Lights" lingers long after reading, and Stephen King's gleefully macabre entry "The Fifth Step" has a wonderful surprise ending. Although the stories represent a wide range of the mystery genre, the anthology is shockingly lacking in diversity. Of its 21 total stories, only six are written by women and none are by authors of color. VERDICT Purchase for large collections where short story collections and anthologies are popular. —Jennifer Knight, Coos Bay P.L., OR

Library Journal

★ 2021-07-14
Editor Child, series editor Otto Penzler, and their colleague Michele Slung team up to offer 20 gems from 2021 in the first volume of a new series.

Many of this year’s best follow a familiar road: pitting a rugged male hero, often with military street cred, against the bad guys. Doug Allyn’s “30 and Out” features an Afghan War vet who hunts a colleague’s killer; Jim Allyn’s ex-Army police veteran worries about being teamed with an unreliable partner in “Things That Follow.” But a surprising number include less traditional crime busters. A young man entranced with the Irish language is the gentle hero of Andrew Welsh-Huggins’ “The Path I Took.” Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski, a familiar female gumshoe, makes a welcome appearance in “Love & Other Crimes” along with the female proprietor of Wilde Investigations in Janice Law’s “The Client.” Moms get into the act in Alison Gaylin’s “The Gift” and Tom Mead’s “Heatwave.” So do new friends, in Martin Edwards’ “The Locked Cabin,” and frenemies, in Jacqueline Freimor’s “That Which Is True.” And in a startling tribute to the power of sisterhood, Joseph S. Walker shows how quickly female strangers can bond if the need is urgent in “Etta at the End of the World.” Women take starring roles on the wrong side of the law in John Floyd’s “Biloxi Bound” and Joyce Carol Oates’ “Parole Hearing, California Institution for Women, Chino, CA." Child’s selections seem especially appropriate for 2021, a year that promises change on so many fronts. The only exception is the unexplained bonus reprint, Ambrose Bierce’s “My Favorite Murder,” a bitter tale of a man who revels in the sadistic murder of his uncle. That one belongs to 2020.

Diverse and diverting.

Kirkus Reviews