The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2022

[annieb123]

Originally posted on my blog Nonstop Reader.

The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2022 is a really well curated anthology of short crime fiction edited by Otto Penzler. Released 13th Sept 2022 by W.W. Norton on their Penzler Press imprint, it's an impressive 500 pages and is available in hardcover, paperback, audio, and ebook formats.

This is a well rounded collection of top shelf fiction from big name authors who will probably already be familiar to most mystery fans. The stories are all reprinted here, and were originally published in well known magazines, including Harper's, Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock, New Yorker and other similarly august periodicals. They run the gamut from serious to lightly witty, but all are very well written by professionals who know what they're doing. Even the introduction managed to raise a smile when Crime Queen Sara Paretsky retells a story from a dinner party in her past where an appalled therapist who apparently had no idea who she was diagnosed her as having worrying tendencies and suggested she seek out professional help.

I enjoy anthologies very much. They're palate cleansers. They reset the reading mojo and if one story doesn't engage the reader, there's always another one to come along in a few pages. Short fiction is challenging in and of itself as well. Especially in crime fiction which has the intricacies of plot devices, clues, and a solution, getting all that to fit into fewer than 10,000 words is a monumental task. I like seeing how adept authors can be with fitting all the nuts and bolts under the hood, so to speak.

This is a good anthology. All of the stories are good, several are really really good. Additionally, as with nearly all of Mr. Penzler's published anthologies, his story introductions are well written and worth reading on their own merit. They're shorter and more pithy in this collection compared to previous anthologies, but still worth a look.

Four and a half stars. This is a relevant, engaging bunch of stories. Good choice for gift giving, library acquisition, and travel reading.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.