The Best American Mystery Stories 2003 (The Best American Series) - Softcover

OTTO PENZLER is a renowned mystery editor, publisher, columnist, and owner of New York’s The Mysterious Bookshop, the oldest and largest bookstore solely dedicated to mystery fiction. He has edited more than fifty crime-fiction anthologies. He lives in New York.

Introduction

I drive a two-seater. It"s a drop-top sports car built low to the ground for better
control and handling. All right, it"s an automatic with a pushbutton, electronic
top. But that"s not the point. The point is that when the top"s down and I"m
sailing through the curves along the bay, the wind cutting in behind my
shades, I can"t think of a better car to be in. Sure, it"s so small, I can"t fit
more than one suitcase into it. But again, that"s not the point. The point is
performance and beauty. In a word, velocity.
The point is this is why I love the short story. Velocity. Room for
one suitcase only. The short story deals with issues and themes large and
small. But it does it succinctly and quickly. The short story is a car for the
short track. Put the top down and power into the curves. If you"re going a long
distance, get yourself a novel. Take the freeway and get yourself an SUV.
I drove seven SUVs before I ever tried a sports car. I found the
difference amazing. You have to dig in to write a novel. You have to cover all
the angles. You need a trunk big enough to carry a lot of baggage and extra
supplies. Conversely, the short story is lean and mean and built low to the
ground. Its ideas burn on high-test. They are spare and to the point.
What happened to me happened to many novelists I know. You
push a few books out there, get them on the shelf, and get a bit of notice.
Then comes the big question: "Have you ever thought about a short story?"
One thing leads to another, and you leave the big car in the garage, and
you"re out running around in a candy-apple-red sports car. It"s fun. It"s a
change of pace. Nine out of ten doctors recommend it.
In these same pages last year James Ellroy said he wrote his first
short story only to pay off a debt. After that, he repeatedly returned to the
short form. Me, too. In fact, my guess is that the debt I paid with my first
short story was to the same guy — but that"s another story. The point is I
reluctantly tried it and then liked it. I ended up happy for the coercive genesis
of it. I got hooked. I found the short story gave me balance. Elements of
character and action and intrigue were all there. But in a spare form I found
invigorating. I like the short story because you can conceive and complete in
hours or weeks instead of months or years. It is a form I am sure I will always
come back to. It has become part of how I evaluate and then execute my
ideas as a writer.
This is not by any means to say that the short story is the easier
road to take. The novel and the short story are simply different animals. Or, I
should say, beasts. In the spare style of the short story is the bedrock
philosophy of less is more. This makes the labor over each paragraph, each
sentence, intensely important. Every word must count in the short story, so
the pressure of the writing experience is ratcheted down tightly on the author.
What you have here in this collection are the examples in which
the author has met that pressure and come out with a beauty. Each one of
these stories has a well-tuned machine under the hood.
What I have tried to do here is put together a collection that
showcases the power of the short story. These stories run from the traditional
to the experimental, from deadly serious to deadly satirical, from established
writing masters to voices I am betting you have not heard before but will likely
hear again.
Each story is a sports car that handles superbly as it takes you
to a destination you haven"t been to before. Pay attention to the nuances of
the ride, the telling details of character and place and emotion and
experience. Watch the way a man struggles with language and a new
country, the way a man sees his long-lost daughter in the reconstructed face
of a murder victim. The way a woman extracts justice after being betrayed.
On and on. The way you never know how somebody is going to act or react.
These aren"t shiny sports cars. No way. There is a lot of road grit
on these pages. There is violence and betrayal and justice meted out without
the benefit of the justice system. There is also sympathy and hard-edged
romance and a haunting sense of hope. I think that is why the mystery story
is so important. It can carry all the ingredients, even if the car will hold only
one suitcase.
We live in uncertain times. And as I write this it looks as if they
are only going to become more uncertain. The mystery story is no antidote.
But it certainly can act to reassure, to help make some sense of the world.
Maybe only in a small way, but that is still better than in no way.
So let"s begin. Time to take a ride. You are in luck here. I think
you will find everything you are looking for in these pages.

—Michael Connelly

Copyright © 2003 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Introduction copyright ©
2003 by Michael Connelly. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin
Company.