The Best American Mystery Stories
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Expect the unexpected and prepare to be entertained…
No book published this year will deliver more thrills per page than this one.
Here are twenty of the year's stand-out crime short stories, showcasing not only the very best of the genre, but also the very best American writing full stop.
This outstanding collection is always certain to delight mystery aficionados as well as lovers of all great fiction.
The purest kind of detective story involves a crime solved by observation and deduction, rather than luck, coincidence or confession. The supreme form of detection involves the explanation of an impossible crime, whether the sort of vanishing act that would make Houdini proud, a murder that leaves no visible trace, or the most unlikely villain imaginable.
Virtually all of the great writers of detective fiction have produced masterpieces in this genre, including Agatha Christie, Edgar Allan Poe, Dorothy L. Sayers, Arthur Conan Doyle, Raymond Chandler, G.K. Chesterton, John Dickson Carr, Dashiell Hammett, Ngaio Marsh and Stephen King.
In this definitive collection, Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler selects a multifarious mix from across the entire history of the locked room story, which should form the cornerstone of any crime reader's library.
A state of the Art collection: the world's bestselling crime writer complies his pick of the year's best crime writing.
This year's guest editor is Lee Child, the creator of Jack Reacher and a simultaneous bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic.
Featuring twenty of the year's standout crime short stories handpicked by one of the world's best thriller writers, Best American Mystery Stories 2010 showcases not only the very best of the crime genre, but the best of American writing full stop. Within its pages, literary legends rub shoulders with the hottest new talent. Contributors in the past have included James Lee Burke, Jeffrey Deaver, Michael Connelly, Alice Munro and Joyce Carol Oates.