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

by Sara Paretsky (Editor), Otto Penzler (Editor)

Overview

Sara Paretsky selects the twenty best mystery short stories of the year, including tales by Michael Connelly, Jo Nesbo, Joyce Carol Oates, Colson Whitehead, and more!

Under the auspices of New York City's legendary mystery fiction specialty bookstore, The Mysterious Bookshop, and aided by Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler, international bestseller and MWA Grandmaster Sara Paretsky has selected the twenty most puzzling, most thrilling, and most mysterious short stories from the past year, collected now in one entertaining volume.

Includes stories by:

• Doug Allyn
• Colin Barrett
• Jerome Charyn
• Michael Connelly
• Susan Frith
• Tom Larsen
• Sean Marciniak
• Stefon Mears
• Kieth Lee Morris
• Gwen Mullins
• Jo Nesbo
• Joyce Carol Oates
• Annie Reed
• Kristen Kathryn Rusch
• Anna Scotti
• Ginny Swart
• Ellen Tremiti
• Joseph S. Walker
• Colson Whitehead
• Michael Wiley

Plus a bonus vintage story from the annals of mystery fiction, written over a century in the past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613163498
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	09/27/2022
Series:	Best Mystery Stories , #2
Pages:	500
Sales rank:	181,199
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Sara Paretsky is the author of the bestselling V.I. Warshawski novels, including, most recently, Bleeding Kansas. Paretsky is the winner of many awards, including the Cartier Diamond Dagger award for lifetime achievement from the British Crime Writers’ Association. She lives in Chicago.


Otto Penzler, the creator of American Mystery Classics, is also the founder of The Mysterious Press (1975); MysteriousPress.com (2011), an electronic-book publishing company; and New York City’s Mysterious Bookshop (1979). He has won a Raven, the Ellery Queen Award, two Edgars (for the Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, 1977, and The Lineup, 2010), and lifetime achievement awards from NoirCon and The Strand Magazine. He has edited more than 70 anthologies and written extensively about mystery fiction.

Hometown:

Chicago, Illinois

Date of Birth:

June 8, 1947

Place of Birth:

Ames, Iowa

Education:

B.A., Political Science, University of Kansas; Ph.D. and M.B.A., University of Chicago

Website:

http://saraparetsky.com/

Editorial Reviews

★ 07/25/2022

Tom Larsen’s “El Cuerpo en el Barril” (“The Body in the Barrel”) is the first among equals in this impressive anthology of 20 mystery stories. Larsen’s years in Ecuador translate into a vivid depiction of that country in the service of a memorable procedural featuring Capitán Juan Delgado, nicknamed the fat toad by underlings. Delgado, whose indifference to societal norms may be what has made him a great sleuth, must solve the murder of a man whose corpse was left in a barrel in the coastal town of Manta. Larsen’s tale is an exemplar of making an unpleasant lead a character who compels attention. Susan Frith’s unsettling “Better Austens” lures readers in with benign opening passages about a book club whose members read light fiction to balance their demanding jobs; the reveal of what those jobs are is a shocker. Among the better-known contributors, Jo Nesbø stands out with “Black Knight,” whose antihero lead, a hit man, is engaged in a deadly battle of wits with a professional rival in Milan. Diverse voices, settings, and premises make this a treat for fans of literate and inventive mystery fiction. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Penzler's latest anthology of the year's best mystery stories, guest edited this time by Sara Paretsky, brings together short fiction weighted toward character-driven tales awash in psychological thrills. Mobsters, assassins, and executioners blend with conflicted and embattled everypersons, leaving no doubt that mayhem can slip into our tightest corners."

Booklist STARRED REVIEW

★ 2022-10-12
The latest in publisher Otto Penzler’s long-running series presents 20 contemporary American mystery stories and one bonus story from 1917, with a brief but sharp introduction by Paretsky.

Paretsky argues that contrary to the oft-quoted dictum, “Write what you know,” mystery fiction gives authors license to use their imaginations liberally, often starting with their own emotions and then pushing the boundaries into the realm of what might have been if only they had been bolder, or more curious, or occasionally just plain sociopathic. Most of these stories have rather pedestrian settings. Doug Allyn’s “Kiss of Life” begins with a day at the beach. Sean Marciniak’s “October in Kauai” traces two youngsters’ scheme to leave Schenectady for a tropical paradise. Keith Lee Morris celebrates Christmas in Jacksonville, Florida, in “Sleigh Bells for the Hayride.” Joyce Carol Oates’ “Detour” has a familiar suburban setting, and Annie Reed’s “Little City Blues” uses Reno, Vegas’ less glamorous sister, as the background for a timeworn detective trope: A private eye gets the goods on an errant spouse. Even the two overseas adventures, Tom Larsen’s “El Cuerpo en el Barril” and Colin Barrett’s “A Shooting in Rathreedane,” are set largely in police stations. And Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s “Grief Spam” unfolds over the internet. But the stories take off from their humble points of origin into spaces few would have predicted as they explore the terrain most familiar and yet most mysterious of all: the geography of the human heart.

Imaginations run loose in the best ways possible.

Kirkus Reviews