The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century

by Hillerman, Tony

• ISBN13: 9780618012718
• ISBN10: 0618012710
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-04-13
• Publisher: MARINER BOOKS

Summary

In THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES OF THE CENTURY, best-selling author Tony Hillerman and mystery expert Otto Penzler present an unparalleled treasury of American suspense fiction that every fan will cherish. Offering the finest examples from all reaches of the genre, this collection charts the mystery's eminent history from the turn-of-the-century puzzles of Futrelle, to the seminal pulp fiction of Hammett and Chandler, to the mystery story's rise to legitimacy in the popular mind, a trend that has benefited masterly writers like Westlake, Hunter, and Grafton. Nowhere else can readers find a more thorough, more engaging, more essential distillation of American crime fiction.Penzler, BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES series editor, and Hillerman, whose Leaphorn/Chee novels have won him multiple Edgar Awards and millions of devotees, winnowed this select group out of a thousand stories, drawing on sources as diverse as ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE and ESQUIRE, COLLIER'S and THE NEW YORKER. Giants of the genre abound -- Raymond Chandler, Stephen King, Dashiell Hammett, Lawrence Block, Ellery Queen, Sara Paretsky, and others -- but the editors also unearthed gems by luminaries rarely found in suspense anthologies: William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Damon Runyon, Harlan Ellison, James Thurber, and Joyce Carol Oates. Mystery buffs and newcomers alike will delight in the thrilling stories and top-notch writing of a hundred years' worth of the finest suspense, crime, and mystery writing.

Table of Contents

Foreword	ix
Otto Penzler
Introduction	xiv
Tony Hillerman
A Retrieved Reformation	1	(7)
O. Henry
Paul's Case	8	(18)
Willa Cather
The Problem of Cell 13	26	(32)
Jacques Futrelle
Blind Man's Buff	58	(15)
Frederick Irving Anderson
Naboth's Vineyard	73	(12)
Melville Davisson Post
A Jury of Her Peers	85	(20)
Susan Glaspell
The Gutting of Couffignal	105	(28)
Dashiell Hammett
Haircut	133	(11)
Ring Lardner
Blue Murder	144	(18)
Wilbur Daniel Steele
The Perfect Crime	162	(16)
Ben Ray Redman
The Baby in the Icebox	178	(15)
James M. Cain
The Murder	193	(11)
John Steinbeck
Sense of Humor	204	(8)
Damon Runyan
Ransom	212	(23)
Pearl S. Buck
Red Wind	235	(44)
Raymond Chandler
The Catbird Seat	279	(9)
James Thurber
Rear Window	288	(30)
Cornell Woolrich
An Error in Chemistry	318	(17)
William Faulkner
The Nine Mile Walk	335	(9)
Harry Kemelman
The Adventure of the President's Half Disme	344	(19)
Ellery Queen
The Homesick Buick	363	(12)
John D. MacDonald
Gone Girl	375	(30)
Ross Macdonald
The Moment of Decision	405	(21)
Stanley Ellin
First Offense	426	(17)
Evan Hunter
The Couple Next Door	443	(15)
Margaret Millar
The Day of the Execution	458	(8)
Henry Slesar
The Terrapin	466	(13)
Patricia Highsmith
The Possibility of Evil	479	(10)
Shirley Jackson
The Comforts of Home	489	(19)
Flannery O'Connor
Good Man, Bad Man	508	(15)
Jerome Weidman
Goodbye, Pops	523	(7)
Joe Gores
The Whimper of Whipped Dogs	530	(17)
Harlan Ellison
The Wager	547	(9)
Robert L. Fish
Do with Me What You Will	556	(12)
Joyce Carol Oates
Quitters, Inc.	568	(19)
Stephen King
The Absence of Emily	587	(10)
Jack Ritchie
By the Dawn's Early Light	597	(18)
Lawrence Block
Iris	615	(20)
Stephen Greenleaf
Three-Dot Po	635	(14)
Sara Paretsky
The Parker Shotgun	649	(16)
Sue Grafton
Too Many Crooks	665	(13)
Donald E. Westlake
Hot Springs	678	(16)
James Crumley
The Dark Snow	694	(19)
Brendan DuBois
Red Clay	713	(16)
Michael Malone
Poachers	729	(41)
Tom Franklin
Running Out of Dog	770	(31)
Dennis Lehane
Biographical Notes	801

Excerpts

Foreword As a fan of mystery fiction for what is now approaching a half century (good grief! can it be?), I have read what some might regard as an inordinate number of short stories. It is impossible to count the thousands, but it is possible to count the great ones. For me, it has always been the short story. It started when I was just a kid and loved the surprise endings of O. Henry, the bizarre situations of a Sherlock Holmes adventure, and the deliciously creepy nightmares of Edgar Allan Poe. My appreciation of the short form was enhanced when I discovered the quirky humor of Damon Runyon and Ring Larder, clearly at their peak in a twenty-page sidesplitter. Finally, my devotion was complete when I learned that Stanley Ellin needed a full month to polish his little masterpieces, explaining their meticulous perfection. Most classic detective stories rely on a single clue, or gimmick, or bit of legerdemain, or realization (the "aha" moment); the rest is embellishment. The old-fashioned detective novel, when it was good, created a universe with a population about whom the reader cared. An antisocial act, usually murder, occurred to disrupt the comfortable progress of that universe, and the remainder of the narrative illustrated the consequences of that crime on the population and the efforts made to apprehend the villain. With the identification of the perpetrator of the very bad deed (or deeds, as it was common for the culprit to commit additional crimes in order to cover up the first one), the universe was restored to its original peaceful state. And the villain was always caught because, no matter how brilliant he was, he invariably made one small mistake, which was spotted by the hero detective (but rarely by the reader). Because the entire denouement relied on the uncovering of that single element to complete the jigsaw puzzle, it is clear that many of those novels could have been told in short story form with no loss of cleverness by the protagonist. Some of those novels, stripped to their essentials, became the brilliant short stories included in this volume. But do not misunderstand me. Originality and felicitousness of language, development of memorable characters, even the texture of a created universe, cannot all be condensed into a short story. The best mystery novels, just as the best in all literature, are far richer than their plots. The story line is merely a single element, albeit a vital one, of any good crime novel, just as it is of any novel. In many cases, the tighter constrictions of the short story enable, or even force, an author into an economy of words that produces a crisper, superior work. Searching for these gems of storytelling led me to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine as a young reader in my twenties. Making its first appearance in 1941, it is still being published, carrying the banner of the mystery story longer than any magazine in history. By the 1940s, the pulp magazines had begun their plunge into oblivio

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Excerpted from The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century
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