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Rating: 
Summary: A good anthology to study if you write mystery fiction.
Review: "Best Mysteries" stands out as an excellent collection of short stories mostly because of its inclusion of fresh and creative new authors. One such author is Dave Shaw and Shaw's "Twelve Days Out of Traction" epitomizes the creativity these talented young writers bring to the table. "Twelve Days" hilariously, intelligently and entertainingly satirizes what has truly become the national pastime--litigation. Written with a Sahara-like wit, the author leads the reader through the inner-thoughts of a career slip and fall con man during his latest job at a 7-11 in Poughkeepsie. Our hero's purpose at the 7-11 is to fake a fall and collect a quick out-of- court settlement before the insurance company catches on to the con. However, our hero is no slip and fall amateur, he takes pride in his craft and sells his falls by sustaining bona-fide injuries. You could say he is the Michelangelo of slip and fall artists. Although we never learn our flawed hero's name, that is because he keeps changing his name to stay a step ahead of the authorities, we do learn the names of his partners-in-scam-- they are Homer Pierce, attorneys at-law (there is more than one), and Dr. Greg Richardson or Dr. Richard Greggson, the same person but different names depending on the good doctor's ethical mood that day. "Twelve Days" is not just some cute story about a man who falls on floors for a living. Instead, we learn a little bit about values in a capitalist society that places accumulation of wealth by any means over accumulation of wealth by just means. For instance, our hero's chosen vocation has helped him define a well-developed sense of right and wrong. Twisted and skewed as his life philosophy may be, he does, at least, see the world in stark terms and has chosen his lifestyle voluntarily and without regret. In fact, our hero, who plays the victim as a job, does not see himself as a victim at all, and is offended by the very notion that we would pity him. No, he pities us, and expresses himself profanely and impolitely on this point. Take the following passages for instance: "The clincher, of course, is that in reality I am no victim and in reality I am sick to death of all the victim talk sweeping the damn county...The way I see it, if you don't have your own scam, that doesn't make you a g--damn victim; it only makes you a g--d--n idiot. Case in point: Newt Gingrich. Genius...I've been thinking that this is at the root of what I think will make retirement a little harder to handle--worrying about eventually feeling like the rest of the average ducks out there, blending in and not giving a damn, whining my a-- away. I'd rather somebody just blow my g--d----d head off if it comes to all that." Kind of makes you want to run out and fake choking on a chicken bone at a fancy French restaurant, or vote Republican. However, before we shed our dreary life clothes for the exciting, fast-pace world of grift, we should once again be reminded of the values implicated by such a choice. Here, Shaw cleverly contrasts the non-violent scams of our profane hero, with the movements of the polite Mexican-French Canadian Bandito, a five and dime store robber who uses a .22 caliber handgun, wears a sombrero, treats his would-be victims courteously and as a result has become something of a media darling. Our hero sees much of himself in the Bandito, save the possible exceptions that the Bandito is much more courteous, but "blatant" in scoring his loot by using a gun. Invariably, at some point their paths will cross and our hero's world will no longer be viewed in colors of black and white. It will be gray. Or will it? Ah, therein lies the mystery and explains why this marvelously written and thought- provoking short story was chosen as one of the Best American Mystery Stories for 1998.
Rating: 
Summary: Always a Great Read
Review: Although I can't say that I enjoyed every story, I can say that I enjoyed nearly all the stories, which is about as good as you can get with short story anthologies. A great collection of great mystery stories! I hope the series continues for quite a long time...I look forward to each new edition!!
Rating:
Summary: great stories, i couldn't put the book down
Review: as soon as i finished the book, i got online and ordered the 1999 edition.i never was much of a fiction reader, but i'm hooked now
Rating:
Summary: A nice read
Review: Doing a review on an anthology is not easy since there are a multitude of stories written by several authors. This book comprises a collection of the best mystery stories of 1998. Sue Grafton was right in saying most of the stories are crime novels, which is precisely what they are. I was pleasantly surprised by two of the stories, CHILD SUPPORT by David Ballard and SECRETS by Janice Law. In the first story, the author takes a simple child custody story as told by the point of view of the father. He then gets into an extraordinary circumstance that jeopardizes his relationship with his son. What makes this story interesting is that it is narrated by the ex-husband, leaving the reader with the preconceptions left by the storyteller. One must remember a lesson given to us by Agatha Christie in some of her books. It is never to take the narrator's story as face value. It is not till one reaches the end that one gets the rest of the story. SECRETS was another delightful surprise. It is a revenge story several years in the making. Its main theme is the power of motherhood and the extremes that they will go in protecting their children. Another interesting aspect of this book is a story by Stuart Kaminsky called FIND MIRIAM. It is an abbreviated version of his novel VENGEANCE. I assume he wrote the short story before he decided to make it a novel. It takes a genius to implement that same story in a novel and I think Kaminsky pulls it off.
Rating:
Summary: Very Solid!
Review: Sue Grafton introduces this entertaining collection with an important disclaimer. The stories she's picked from mystery magazines and other sources as different as Playboy and the Kenyon Review aren't all quite mysteries in the classical sense. Rather, reflecting a change in the genre that series editor Otto Penzler notes in his Foreword, they're stories whose central feature is simply a crime or a criminal of one kind or another. And sometimes the criminality is handled in an "offbeat" way. Dave Shaw's well-told "Twelve Days out of Traction" takes us into a petty criminal's mind with amusing results. His narrator runs an insurance scam where he stages falls and his fake lawyer friends write threatening letters that earn his little consortium good money. But it's painful work--as the title indicates--and sometimes he can get surprisingly upstaged. Lawrence Block's intriguing "Keller on the Spot" offers a different twist. Keller's a contract killer sent to Dallas to murder a millionaire, but he ironically ends up becoming involved in the man's life in ways he could never have expected. David Ballard's tricky "Child Support" imagines the devilish depths to which battling spouses can sink when their marriage collapses. Helen Tucker's rather predictable "The Power of Suggestion" also explores the modern marriage battleground, drawing equally disturbing conclusions about marital happiness and what it drives people to. But Merrill Joan Gerber paints a much brighter picture of family life, one so rich and fulfilling that it inspires more than envy in "This is a Voice from Your Past." Two standouts in which dogs play pivotal roles are Walter Mosley's simmering excerpt from Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned and Pat Jordan's ominous and richly-detailed gun-running tale, "Beyond Dog." Jordan's story is set in Florida, as is John Lutz's brooding "Night Crawlers" and together with Margaret Maron's deeply satisfying "Prayer for Judgment," this triad offers the collection's most absorbing use of atmosphere. The stories in this anthology use American settings with three notable exceptions. Peter Robinson's evocative "The Two Ladies of Rose Cottage" is set in Yorkshire and surprisingly centers around Thomas Hardy. Taking place in today's London, Edward D. Hoch's quietly clever "The Old Spies Club" answers a question that has possessed international thriller writers in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse: where's the beef? Hoch finds his subject in imagining a Cold War-era secret about to escape, and the somewhat hapless attempts to keep that from happening. Best-selling thriller writer John Lescroart ably fills in a blank in the Sherlock Holmes canon, giving life to Watson's passing comment about a "missing story." His rousing "The Giant Rat of Sumatra" launches Holmes against his old nemesis Moriarity, who threatens the world with a very contemporary evil. The biographical notes at the end of the book also include the authors' reports on the genesis of their stories, and in some cases, these little narratives are as captivating as the stories themselves--or more so...
Rating:
Summary: Very Solid!
Review: Sue Grafton introduces this entertaining collection with an important disclaimer. The stories she's picked from mystery magazines and other sources as different as Playboy and the Kenyon Review aren't all quite mysteries in the classical sense. Rather, reflecting a change in the genre that series editor Otto Penzler notes in his Foreword, they're stories whose central feature is simply a crime or a criminal of one kind or another. And sometimes the criminality is handled in an "offbeat" way. Dave Shaw's well-told "Twelve Days out of Traction" takes us into a petty criminal's mind with amusing results. His narrator runs an insurance scam where he stages falls and his fake lawyer friends write threatening letters that earn his little consortium good money. But it's painful work--as the title indicates--and sometimes he can get surprisingly upstaged. Lawrence Block's intriguing "Keller on the Spot" offers a different twist. Keller's a contract killer sent to Dallas to murder a millionaire, but he ironically ends up becoming involved in the man's life in ways he could never have expected. David Ballard's tricky "Child Support" imagines the devilish depths to which battling spouses can sink when their marriage collapses. Helen Tucker's rather predictable "The Power of Suggestion" also explores the modern marriage battleground, drawing equally disturbing conclusions about marital happiness and what it drives people to. But Merrill Joan Gerber paints a much brighter picture of family life, one so rich and fulfilling that it inspires more than envy in "This is a Voice from Your Past." Two standouts in which dogs play pivotal roles are Walter Mosley's simmering excerpt from Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned and Pat Jordan's ominous and richly-detailed gun-running tale, "Beyond Dog." Jordan's story is set in Florida, as is John Lutz's brooding "Night Crawlers" and together with Margaret Maron's deeply satisfying "Prayer for Judgment," this triad offers the collection's most absorbing use of atmosphere. The stories in this anthology use American settings with three notable exceptions. Peter Robinson's evocative "The Two Ladies of Rose Cottage" is set in Yorkshire and surprisingly centers around Thomas Hardy. Taking place in today's London, Edward D. Hoch's quietly clever "The Old Spies Club" answers a question that has possessed international thriller writers in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse: where's the beef? Hoch finds his subject in imagining a Cold War-era secret about to escape, and the somewhat hapless attempts to keep that from happening. Best-selling thriller writer John Lescroart ably fills in a blank in the Sherlock Holmes canon, giving life to Watson's passing comment about a "missing story." His rousing "The Giant Rat of Sumatra" launches Holmes against his old nemesis Moriarity, who threatens the world with a very contemporary evil. The biographical notes at the end of the book also include the authors' reports on the genesis of their stories, and in some cases, these little narratives are as captivating as the stories themselves--or more so...
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