The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2023 by Amor Towles, Otto Penzler
English | 2023 | Mystery & Thriller
Amor Towles selects the best mystery short stories of the year, including tales by Andrew Child, Jeffery Deaver, and T.C. Boyle.
In his introduction to this volume, guest editor Amor Towles pays tribute to the forgotten person of the mystery story—the cadaver. “Male or female, old or young, rich or poor,” he writes, “for over a hundred years the cadaver has been accommodating, gracious, and generally on time. There is no other figure in crime who has proven to be more reliable.”
Like the cadaver, this anthology series, now in its third year of publication, is also proving reliable, bringing to readers the finest mystery/crime/suspense stories of the year from a variety of sources including mystery and general interest magazines, anthologies, online publications, and literary periodicals.
Among the treasures collected herein are Jeffery Deaver’s “Dodge,” in which a chess match between a volatile woman and a U.S. marshal takes a surprise twist; “The Landscaper’s Wife,” a suspense-filled tale by Brendan DuBois that explodes all expectation; and Kerry Hammond’s “Strangers at a Table,” which offers a darkly witty homage to Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple.
The collection contains well-known authors such as T.C. Boyle and up-and-comers such as Jessi Lewis; it features tales with famous crime-fighters (Jack Reacher and Sherlock Holmes) and a bonus story from the annals of mystery history by Edith Wharton. In short, these pages promise something for every reader of crime fiction, no matter the particularities of his or her taste.
Includes:
Doug Allyn, Blind Baseball
Derrick Belanger, The Adventure of the Misquoted Macbeth
T. C. Boyle, Princess
Joslyn Chase, Cold Hands, Warm Heart
Andrew Child, New Kid in Town
Aaron Philip Clark, Death at the Sundial Motel
Jeffery Deaver, Dodge
Brendan DuBois, The Landscaper’s Wife
Kerry Hammond, Strangers at a Table
Victor Kreuiter, Miller and Bell
David Krugler, Two Sharks Walk into a Bar
Tom Larsen, Pobre Maria
Avram Lavinsky, Playing God
Jessi Lewis, Ears
Ashley Lister, The Smoking Gunners
Sean McCluskey, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday
Michael Mallory, What the Cat Dragged in
Lou Manfredo, Sundown
Annie Reed, The Promise
Anna Round, Glass
Joseph S. Walker, Crime Scene
Edith Wharton, A Bottle of Perrier
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