The Best American Mystery Stories 2020

Foreword

Another year, another edition of The Best American Mystery Stories. Just as each year presents surprises and memorable moments, so does each volume in this prestigious series. It has been my privilege to be the series editor for all twenty-four annual volumes of these monuments to excellence in the realm of the mystery short story.

Writing a good mystery story is no small thing. Many of the novelists I’ve worked with over the years have claimed that it’s harder to produce a good short story, where every word must count so heavily, than to have the expansive luxury of telling the story over scores of thousands of words.

John Dickson Carr, the greatest writer of impossible crime stories who ever concocted a locked-room puzzle, claimed that the natural form of the traditional mystery is not the novel but the short story. It is not uncommon, he pointed out, for a detective story to revolve around a single incident, with a single clue, which can be discovered, divulged, and have its significance explained within a few pages. The rest is embellishment.

While it is redundant for me to write it again, since I have already done so in each of the previous twenty-three volumes of this series, it falls into the category of fair warning to state that many people regard a “mystery” as a detective story. I regard the detective story as one subgenre of a much more inclusive literary form, which I define as any short work of fiction in which a crime (usually murder, as the stakes are highest when a human life is being taken), or the threat of a crime (creating suspense), is central to the theme or the plot.

While I love good puzzles and tales of pure ratiocination, few of these are written today, as the mystery genre has evolved (for better or worse, depending on your point of view) into a more character-driven form of literature, with more emphasis on the “why” of a crime’s commission than the “who” or the “how.” The line between mystery fiction and general fiction has become more and more blurred in recent years, producing fewer memorable traditional detective stories but more significant literature.

As is true every year, I could not have perused the 1,500–2,000 mystery stories that were published and examined last year, and much of the heavy lifting was done by my invaluable colleague, the longtime editor Michele Slung. She is able to read, evaluate, and commit to seemingly lifelong memory a staggering percentage of those stories, culling those that clearly do not belong on a short list — ​or a long one either, for that matter. She examines twice as many stories as that to determine if they have mystery or criminal content, which is frequently impossible to know merely by reading the title.

The same standards have pertained to every one of the volumes in this important series. The best writing makes it into the book. Fame, friendship, original venue, reputation, subject — ​none of it matters. It isn’t only the qualification of being the best writer that will earn a spot on the table of contents; it also must be the best story.

After Michele has gathered the stories to be seriously considered, I read the harvested crop, passing along the best fifty (or at least those I liked best, which I like to think is the same thing) to the guest editor, who selects the twenty that are then reprinted, with the other thirty being listed in an honor roll as “Other Distinguished Mystery Stories.”

Sincere thanks are due to this year’s guest editor, C. J. Box, the number-one New York Times bestselling author of twenty-seven novels, including the Joe Pickett series. He has won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel (Blue Heaven, 2009) as well as an Anthony, a Macavity, a Gumshoe, two Barrys, and the 2010 Reading the West Book Award for fiction. His novels have been translated into thirty languages, and over 10 million copies of his books have been sold in the U.S. and abroad.

This is an appropriate time to thank the previous guest editors, who have done so much to make this prestigious series such a resounding success: Robert B. Parker, Sue Grafton, Ed McBain, Donald E. Westlake, Lawrence Block, James Ellroy, Michael Connelly, Nelson DeMille, Joyce Carol Oates, Scott Turow, Carl Hiaasen, George Pelecanos, Jeffery Deaver, Lee Child, Harlan Coben, Robert Crais, Lisa Scottoline, Laura Lippman, James Patterson, Elizabeth George, John Sandford, Louise Penny, and Jonathan Lethem.

While Michele and I engage in a relentless quest to locate and read every mystery/crime/suspense story published, I live in terror that I will miss a worthy story, so if you are an author, editor, or publisher, or care about one, please feel free to send a book, magazine, or tearsheet to me c/o The Mysterious Bookshop, 58 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007. If it first appeared electronically, you must submit a hard copy. It is vital to include the author’s contact information. No unpublished material will be considered, for what should be obvious reasons. No material will be returned. No critical analysis will be offered, nor an explanation of why a story wasn’t selected. If you distrust the postal service, please enclose a self-addressed, stamped postcard.

To be eligible, a story must have been written by an American or a Canadian and first published in an American or Canadian publication in the calendar year 2020. The earlier in the year I receive the story, the more fondly I regard it. If it is published near the end of the year, that can’t be helped, so please get it to me as quickly as possible. For reasons known only to the dunderheads who wait until Christmas week to submit a story published the previous spring, holding eligible stories for months before submitting them occurs every year, causing murderous thoughts while I read a stack of stories while my friends are trimming the Christmas tree or otherwise celebrating the holiday season. It had better be a damned good story if you do this.

Because of the very tight production schedule for this book, the absolute firm deadline is December 31. If the story arrives one day later, it will not be read. This is neither whimsical nor arbitrary, but absolutely necessary in order to meet publishing schedules. Sorry.

O.P.