The Best American Mystery Stories 2001 - [Anthology] Read online

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  The Best American

  Mystery Stories 2001

  Ed by Lawrence Block

  Scanned & Proofed by MadMaxAU

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  Contents

  Foreword

  Introduction by Lawrence Block

  JENNIFER ANDERSON

  Things That Make Your Heart Beat Faster

  RUSSELL BANKS

  Lobster Night

  MICHAEL DOWNS

  Prison Food

  LESLIE EDGERTON

  In the Zone

  WILLIAM GAY

  The Paperhanger

  JEREMIAH HEALY

  A Book of Kells

  STEVE HOCKENSMITH

  Erie’s Last Day

  CLARK HOWARD

  Under Suspicion

  MICHAEL HYDE

  Her Hollywood

  DAN LEONE

  Family

  THOMAS LYNCH

  Blood Sport

  DAVID MEANS

  Carnie

  KENT NELSON

  Tides

  JOYCE CAROL OATES

  The Girl with the Blackened Eye

  T. JEFFERSON PARKER

  Easy Street

  BILL PRONZINI

  The Big Bite

  PETER ROBINSON

  Missing in Action

  ROXANA ROBINSON

  The Face-Lift

  JOHN SALTER

  Big Ranch

  NATHAN WALPOW

  Push Comes to Shove

  Contributors’ Notes

  Other Distinguished Mystery Stories of 2000

  • • •

  Foreword

  This is the fifth volume in this series of Best American Mystery Stones from the distinguished publishing house Houghton Mifflin, and, I don’t know, but it may well be the best yet.

  There are quite a few authors here who were previously unknown to me, just as there are among those on the honor roll — the other distinguished mystery stories of 2000. Many of the genre’s more familiar names are not present in this collection, either because they failed to write short stores this past year or because some of these new voices simply produced superior work. This is, for all of us who are serious readers, whether of mystery fiction or of any fiction at all, a very good thing. It’s a comfort to know that the pipes remain full, and that the future of the story is secure.

  I’ve noticed one major change since I became the series editor five years ago: That first year, there were a handful of stories published as electronic originals. The next year there were a few more. This year I probably saw 250 to 300 of them, keeping the total number of stories examined well beyond a thousand.

  To be frank, most of the electronically published stories are not terribly outstanding. Not much editing occurs on many sites in the e-publishing world, and often not much selectivity, either, so it’s not surprising that the vast bulk of those stories have nothing original or stylistically compelling about them. However, and this is significant, not a single story in the 1997 volume even made it to the honor roll. This year several did, and several others were pretty close. I can conclude only that more and more good material will show up on these sites among all the dross, and it won’t be long before a story, or more than one, cracks the ice and makes it into the book.

  Some things don’t change much. More of the stories are crime or suspense stories — stories of character and motivation — than detective stories. This is probably because the pure detective story may be the hardest kind of short fiction to write. On the other hand, it may be that younger authors are more interested in delving into personality and psychology than in puzzles. Either way, this phenomenon gives the anthology a range that would be impossible if all the tales were of observation and detection.

  The other thing that doesn’t change much is that this year’s guest editor, Lawrence Block, has selected a story by Joyce Carol Oates, who breaks her own record by appearing in this annual for the fourth time. In case you missed it, she was also nominated for another National Book Award, her sixth, for the brilliant Blonde, a novel about Marilyn Monroe. Eighteen of the other authors all make their first appearance in Best American Mystery Stories, the exception being Peter Robinson, who brightens these pages for the second time.

  Lawrence Block, who has had stories in two previous volumes, was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America for his lifelong achievements in the world of mystery fiction. He is a former president of that organization and a multiple winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award in both the Best Novel and Best Short Story categories. As guest editor, he was ineligible to have a story selected for this volume. It would, after all, be a mite unseemly for him to select one of his own stories, however worthy.

  I’m sure you will agree that it was worth that sacrifice when you read his amusing introduction and revel in his selections. I wish he could have found room for one or two stories that I loved and he didn’t, but there you are. Immediately after I got his list of stories for the book I called him to say that I had done my own rankings and, astonishingly, eighteen of my top twenty stories were on his list. I can only commend his superb taste.

  No volume in this series should ever be published without my sincere expression of gratitude to Michele Slung, the fastest and smartest reader on the planet, without whom this book would require three years to compile. She examines literally thousands of stories to determine if they are mystery- or crime-related, and then makes a determination of whether they are good enough to be seriously considered. You will find several listings, both among selected stories and those on the honor roll, from what may be defined as arcane sources for this genre, and that is a tribute to her own detective skills in ferreting out worthwhile fiction for these pages.

  Also, a word of thanks is due to the editors and publishers of small magazines in every part of the country who favor us with subscriptions and submissions. None of these people works for the money, but purely for the joy of contributing to the creation and dissemination of fine writing.

  The definition of a mystery story that I have used throughout my somewhat lengthy professional life is any work of fiction in which a crime or the threat of a crime is central to the plot or the theme. If the work is by an American or a Canadian, and has been first published in an American or a Canadian book or periodical, it is eligible for consideration for this book. If you are an author, editor, publisher, or someone who cares about one and would like to submit a story, please do so. Send a tearsheet or the entire publication to me at The Mysterious Bookshop, 129 West 56th Street, New York, New York 10019.

  To be eligible for the next volume, the story must have been published in the calendar year 2001. If it was first published in electronic format, you must submit a hard copy, as I have not yet mastered that machine in the corner, the computer, though I am taking lessons and may soon enter the twentieth century (and yes, I know we are finally in the twenty-first). The earlier your submission arrives, the greater the chance that I’ll love it. For those 135 submissions I got during the last ten days of 2000, I found it a little harder to find the love in my heart that caused me to give up holiday merriment to lock myself in and read, read, read. Be warned.

  O.P.

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  • • •

  Introduction

  The American mystery short story, it is my pleasant duty to report, is in very good shape.

  Were you to skip this introduction and go directly to the stories themselves, you’d discover as much on your own. And, I must say, every impulse but that of ego leads me to urge you to do just that. The stories, to be sure, are
why we’re all here.

  They are the best of this year’s crop, and the crop itself was a bountiful one. And they were written, each and every one of them, for love — love of the ideas that propel them, love of the characters that inhabit them, love of the pure task of dreaming imaginary worlds and putting well-chosen words on paper (or the screen, or what you will).

  This introduction, on the other hand, was written for money. It’s part of my job as guest editor, which consists primarily of reading the year’s fifty best stories as selected by Otto Penzler with the assistance of Michele Slung and choosing twenty of that number for this volume. Having performed that happy task, I’m further required to string together a hundred sentences with the aim of producing something that will serve to introduce twenty fine stories, which, truth to tell, need no introduction. My words, however, will help to justify the presence of my name on the book’s cover, and will also help me earn my fee.

  Should I apologize for my mercenary motive? I think not. I am guided, after all, by Samuel Johnson’s immortal words: “No man but a blockhead wrote but for money.”

  • • •

  Would the good Dr. Johnson’s words echo so resoundingly in my soul, I have often wondered, had he picked some other word? A dimwit, say, or a palpable ass, or a clod or a clown or a numbskull? “No man but a witling, sir, wrote but for money.” It has, I submit, every bit as good a ring to it, and it leaves my own innocent surname well out of it.

  Ah, well. It has always seemed to me that the precise meaning of Johnson’s utterance is subject to interpretation. Perhaps he is saying that the person who writes in the happy anticipation of anything beyond financial reward is playing the fool. If you expect to make a name for yourself, or achieve literary immortality, or change the world, or pile up brownie points in heaven, then surely you’re a blockhead — because money’s all you can truly hope to gain for your efforts.

  Because, certainly, Johnson himself was nowhere near as mercenary as the quoted sentence makes him appear. He wrote for money, unquestionably, and he might well have stopped writing had they stopped paying him, but he wrote also with the clear intent of adding to the world’s store of knowledge and enhancing English literature. Indeed, his dictum works every bit as well, and sounds just as likely to have been uttered by him, if we take it and turn it on its head, to wit: “No man but a blockhead wrote solely for money. “

  And who can argue with that? There are easier ways to make a living — almost all of them, come to think of it — and few less likely ways to amass a fortune.

  • • •

  Back to our twenty superb stories, and the twenty blockheads who’ve written them. Where, you may ask, do I get off calling them that? How can I be so sure money was not what got them written?

  Simple: There’s no economic incentive these days to write short stories.

  Without getting trapped in history, let me just state briefly that it was not ever thus. In the 1920s, top slick magazines paid top writers as much as $5,000 for a short story. (That’s the equivalent of what in today’s purchasing power? $100,000? More?) In the ‘30s and ‘40s, the pulp magazines assured any genuinely competent writer of a market for all the short fiction he could turn out — at a low word rate, to be sure, but enough to constitute a living wage.

  No more. It may be technically possible to make a living writing short fiction, but I know of only one person who does so, year in and year out. (That’s the extraordinary Edward D. Hoch, whose remarkably fertile imagination has proven to be a limitless font of short story ideas.) Short stories, for most of us, are hard to write and hard to sell, and the ones that sell don’t pay much.

  So why write them?

  • • •

  Some of us don’t. When I began writing professionally, shortly after the invention of movable type, most aspiring mystery writers broke in by publishing short stories in magazines. Within a decade most of those magazines had vanished, and often enough a writer’s first novel was that writer’s first published work. Nowadays it’s increasingly common for writers who have achieved some recognition for their novels to be invited to contribute short stories to original anthologies, and frequently this has induced them to write short fiction for the first time.

  I myself began as a writer of short stories. The young writer I was could not possibly have sat down and written a novel right off the bat. I had to write and publish a couple dozen short stories before I was ready to attempt something longer.

  As soon as I could, I began writing novels, and it is the novel that has kept bread on my table over the years. But I never stopped writing short stories, and hope to go on as long as I have breath and brain cells available for the task.

  Why?

  Because it’s satisfying. Because the short story, for all the hard work involved, is as close as this trade comes to instant gratification. Any novel I’ve written has had stretches in it not unlike trench warfare. Short stories, sometimes written at a single sitting, rarely taking more than a week overall, are less of a drain and more of a kick.

  Because it’s liberating. I can turn my hand to themes and backgrounds and types of characters in a short story with which I would not feel comfortable spending an entire novel. I can take chances, knowing that failure means I’ve wasted days, not months or years.

  Because it’s fun.

  • • •

  I suspect the authors of these twenty stories found the business of writing them to be satisfying, liberating, and fun. I certainly had fun reading them, and I trust you will as well.

  I think you will be struck, as I was, by the richness of these stories, and by the extraordinary variety — of theme, of mood, of style — to be found here. The only commonality, really, aside from their excellence, is that all of these stories are crime stories — which is to say that a crime or the threat of a crime is a central element in each of them.

  The variety this affords is boundless. At the same time, however, I submit that crime is a defining element in a way that various topical themes are not. People have put together anthologies in which all of the stories are about dogs, say, or take place on shipboard, or involve children, and this sort of theme can make for a successful collection, but the common feature does not define the stories. Crime is somehow more generic — which, I suppose, helps explain why the mystery is very much a literary genre, and an enduring one.

  It is, as you’ll see, one with a very broad canopy, a house with many mansions.

  You may also be struck by the number of unfamiliar names in this volume’s table of contents. Two thirds of the writers whose stories I’ve selected are men and women whose names and work are new to me.

  And this suggests to me that the short story — the mystery short story — is still the door through which many new writers emerge.

  I think that’s a good thing. The whole mystery genre, we shouldn’t forget, originated in the short story. That, after all, is what Poe wrote.

  And here are twenty hugely talented writers following in his dark footsteps. You have a treat in store for you. Enjoy!

  Lawrence Block

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  • • •

  The Best American

  Mystery Stories 2001

  • • •

  JENNIFER ANDERSON

  Things That Make Your Heart Beat Faster

  From The Missouri Review

  If I were A painter this is how I would paint the Napa Valley: not like those gallery scenes of mustard in bloom or harvest-ripe fruit, but this ghostly silver secret landscape, the vines dormant and white with frost, the moon full, jackrabbits scattering across the roadway before me like mercury beads. Once I was a police officer for a very short time in Saint Amelia, an exclusive postage stamp of a town, and acquired an intimate knowledge of this landscape, four miles square, in the darkness of graveyard shift. Our uniform patches were comical — not authoritarian stars or eagles but orchid-hued grapes set against streaks of orange and green vineyard, glossy and enamel
ed in appearance, which is how I thought of the town. I ached for sleep, longed to hold my sleeping husband’s body, drove the same streets over and over, turned at the same boundaries, waited for something to happen. Like a pinball moving constantly, bouncing against its limitations.

  When my shift ended, I would hurry to my home in the city of Napa, thirty minutes south. My husband and I couldn’t afford to live in Saint Amelia; none of the cops who patrolled there could, except a couple of old-timers who’d bought property way back when. I’d race daybreak to my bedroom with tinfoil-lined windows, where I could preserve the illusion of night and sleep. Desires — for sleep, for my husband, for something unnameable — converged. My husband, a young assistant winemaker, smelled of bleach, wet cement floors, the brackish tip of a wine-soaked cork, wet stainless steel, sweat, oak, sun. When he’d been working in the limestone wine caves, which bloom with multicolored fungi and mold, his hair and skin would be infused with a heightened artificial scent of roses. When he slept, his skin was so warm, like chocolate left in the sun just as it reaches melting point, beaded with moisture. I wanted to press as many of the planes of my cold body against his as possible, quadriceps to hamstring, stomach to back, jaw to jaw. I’d undress and place my gun on my nightstand under an open book, and then, just as I’d fold back a corner of the blankets, dancing with joy inside like someone about to enter a hot bath, his alarm would go off, the third or fourth snooze alarm, the one that meant he was late.