The Best American Mystery Stories : 2006

(This review applies to the 2006 volume, edited by Scott Turow.)

Let us be clear what this book is and is not: it is not a book of mystery stories, as the term is generally understood; this is a book of crime stories. And that is not (just) my opinion. Turow spends the first few pages of his introduction acknowledging and attempting to rationalize his fraud. Here is a quotation from the introduction: "...these stories are portraits, in styles ranging from sly to harrowing, of how crimes occurred—the evolution of circumstances so that bad-acting becomes inevitable" (pp. xiv–xv). He tries arguing that "Mysteries are classic three-act stories, which is why naming these volumes [sic] Best American Mystery Stories is actually very fair" show more (p. xv). Turow's a smart enough guy to be asked to edit an anthology; why, then, has he made such an idiotic argument? Some B are A; these C are B; therefore these C are A? Yeah, no. His first premiss might be true but his implied second premiss certainly is not, and even if it were the conclusion is still false. That all of the pieces are even stories is a weak enough premiss that he begins—on the 3rd page of his introduction (p. xvi), referring to those 4 or 5 stories that are exercises in leaving as much as possible to inference—to explain why those 'stories' that satisfy neither the "story" nor the "mystery" requirement are, nonetheless, mystery stories. Whatever he intended to accomplish, Turow got me to think of him as a dishonest prick, before I've read any of his own fiction; nor am I too keen on checking out any of the other volumes in the series. I hope he (and the series editor and publisher) is OK with that.

What of the stories themselves? About 2/3 of the stories are tolerable: though crime rather than mystery stories, at least they're stories, although one or two are rather more horrifying than I was prepared for. The remaining 4 or 5 are those pretentious story-less exercises in literary conceit.

So, as an anthology of mystery stories, this is a failure. Stories? Mostly but not entirely. Mystery? Nope. show less