The Best American Mystery Stories 2016 (2 page)

While 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 the story 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 No unpublished material will be considered, for what should be obvious reasons.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. If you distrust the postal service, enclose a self-addressed, stamped postcard and I'll let you know your submission was received.

To be eligible for next year's edition, 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 2016. The earlier in the year I receive the story, the more fondly I regard it. For reasons known only to the dunderheads who wait until Christmas week to submit a story published the previous spring, this occurs every year, causing serious irritableness as I read a stack of stories while friends trim Christmas trees, shop, meet for lunches and dinners, and otherwise celebrate the holiday season. It had better be a damned good story if you do this. I am being neither arrogant nor whimsical when I state that the absolute firm deadline for me to receive a submission is December 31; it is due to the very tight production schedule for the book. If the story arrives one day later, it will not be read. Sorry.

O.P.

W
HEN
I
WAS
asked to choose the twenty best mystery stories published in 2015 and then to write an introduction to the volume that would contain them, I had to think about whether I wanted to take on the task. Not only is it always difficult to choose one peer-written story over another, but it's also tough to decide whether a tale actually constitutes a mystery story in the first place.

I've always seen the mystery as a very particular kind of story, quite distinguishable from a tale of crime. A mystery story, to me, has always been about the game, and the game has always pitted the writer against the reader. The rules of the game are simple. A mystery is unfolded by the writer, and during the unfolding all the clues are set into the various scenes, as are the red herrings. The private investigator, police detective, or amateur sleuth explores the circumstances surrounding some sort of act of malfeasance, possibly experiencing the crime scene itself through photos or a personal encounter with it. Ultimately this investigator arrives at a conclusion that concerns the guilty party, the resolution of the crime, or whatever else will bring the story to a satisfactory close. Part of the denouement of this kind of tale is, of course, an explanation from the investigator, to include an interpretation of the clues and the red herrings. Between the writer and the reader, the game involved is a contest in which the reader attempts to discern the clues, to distinguish them from the red herrings, and to reach a conclusion about the guilty party in advance of the author's unveiling it all. In the mystery story, neither clues nor red herrings are explained as the story goes along. Frequently they're not even identified as clues or red herrings. When they're seen by the fictional investigator, they are noted in passing but never dwelt upon. Because of this, the reader must be astute enough to recognize them for what they are as the writer mentions them in passing. Should the reader sort everything out and identify the killer or thief or kidnapper or whatever, then she wins the game and the author loses. A clever author can keep a reader guessing throughout, but because no explanation of clues and red herrings is necessary in a mystery, not an enormous amount of cleverness on the writer's part is actually required.

An example of this would be the most infamous mystery novel of all time, written by none other than the grand dame of the Golden Age of Mystery, Agatha Christie. In her controversial novel
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,
she certainly reveals the clues to the reader. Hercule Poirot sees them and he makes careful note of them. But in every case the reader is left in the dark as to what they are or what they mean. The reader has no way of knowing, for example, that the glittering object that Poirot scoops up from the pond is a wedding ring with the initials of two characters engraved upon it, just as the reader doesn't know that the stranger who came to the house in the days prior to the victim's murder was a salesman offering a Dictaphone to the soon-to-be-done-away-with Roger Ackroyd. What makes the story so maddening—and so infamous—has to do with the narrator of the piece. He admits in the novel's conclusion that had he only put an ellipsis instead of a period at the end of a certain sentence, the game would have been up shortly after Mr. Ackroyd's demise. But he did not do that, Agatha Christie did not do that, and the argument has raged for nearly one hundred years about whether the novel plays fair with the reader.

For me, the larger question has always been this: ellipsis or not, does the novel actually offer an opportunity for the reader to solve the crime in the first place? The answer has to be decidedly no. The reader can certainly guess at it (or, as one of my students once did, write the name of the killer in the margin of his book to spoil the experience for any student following him), but compared to Hercule Poirot, the reader has no real opportunity to work things out, because until the final moments of revelation (along with Poirot's suggestion that the killer politely commit suicide so as not to disturb people significant in his life), the reader doesn't have all the information. The reader may be able to sort clues from red herrings, but as to what they mean? As it is said in some parts of the U.S., fuhgeddaboutit.

Not so the crime story. I've always seen crime stories as different altogether from mysteries. Crime stories, in my point of view, are stories in which the writer all along reveals the clues to the reader. Of course, the writer reveals the red herrings as well. Both are presented in their absolute fullness. In other words, a glittering object drawn out of a pond by the detective in a crime novel would have been identified at once as a ring, and if there were engraved initials upon it, the reader would at once know what they were. That a salesman had been on the dead man's property peddling Dictaphones would also be discovered openly and in the fullness of time. What would occur post
any
discovery of anything at all is a discussion, a meditation, a reflection, or an argument, the subject being the clue or the red herring that had been discovered, uncovered, unearthed, or tripped over.

The art of the crime story derives from exactly that point: the discussion, meditation, reflection, or argument. For it is here that the writer must position the reader to believe the wrong thing. Thus the reader knows from the get-go every single thing the investigator knows or learns. The reader is also present as the investigator and her cohorts try to work out how their piece of information fits or does not fit into the overall puzzle of the crime. Not a single thing is withheld from the reader. And if the crime story is beautifully constructed and artfully written, the reader remains in the dark until the end.

Both approaches to this form of literature are perfectly legitimate. One is generally more lighthearted than the other. One is grittier and possesses more social commentary. Both can be a pleasure to read. But make no mistake: they are very different creatures indeed.

The short story is a tough form to select when a writer wishes to deal either with mystery or with crime. The main stricture is one of length. It's a difficult proposition for the author to lay out both crime and resolution to crime if the author also wishes to play absolutely fair with the reader. Generally one has to cut a corner here or there. One has to make a decision about each fundamental of the writing craft:

How much of a setting can a writer employ? Setting in a crime novel especially often functions as a virtual character.

Which of the many viewpoints available to her will best serve the writer's intent in the story?

How much attitude can be conveyed within the point of view chosen?

Can suspense be developed?

Can suspicion fall on more than one character?

Is there enough time for atmosphere and tone, for any kind of theme, to be developed, for clues to be planted, for the inclusion of red herrings to mislead the reader?

A novella would allow for all of this, but unfortunately, a short story must fight to stay short. This makes things difficult and often results in some elements of the craft being given decidedly short shrift.

In this collection, what I've tried to do is first of all to include both mystery stories and crime stories, the latter being more challenging to find because of fairness to the reader. Since a short story cannot possibly contain every element that I've already mentioned as belonging within a longer work, I've looked for stories that best reflect at least one of those elements.

Thus, what you'll find in this volume are stories that demonstrate a mastery of plotting; stories that compel you to keep turning the pages because of plot and because of setting; stories that wield suspense like a sword; stories of people getting their comeuppance; stories that utilize superb point of view; stories that plumb one particular and unfortunate attribute of a character. You will read the traditional hard-boiled detective story; you will also read the literary crime story. You'll see the screws of madness or misunderstanding or avarice tighten upon characters; you'll read endings that you foresaw from the first and endings that perfectly surprise you.

Each story was chosen, then, because it reflects at least one of the elements that constitute fine writing within the genre. One of the stories was chosen because, with remarkable wit and discipline, it actually reflects them all. I'm not going to tell you which story it is, though.

That's a mystery you'll have to work out on your own.

E
LIZABETH
G
EORGE

MEGAN ABBOTT

FROM
Bibliomysteries

A
T NIGHT, THE
sounds from the canyon shifted and changed. The bungalow seemed to lift itself with every echo and the walls were breathing. Panting.

Just after two, she'd wake, her eyes stinging, as if someone had waved a flashlight across them.

And then she'd hear the noise.

Every night.

The tapping noise, like a small animal trapped behind the wall.

That was what it reminded her of. Like when she was a girl, and that possum got caught in the crawlspace. For weeks they just heard scratching. They only found it when the walls started to smell.

It's not the little men,
she told herself.
It's not.

And then she'd hear a whimper and startle herself. Because it was her whimper and she was so frightened.

I'm not afraid I'm not I'm not

It had begun four months ago, the day Penny first set foot in the Canyon Arms. The chocolate and pink bungalows, the high arched windows and French doors, the tiled courtyard, cosseted on all sides by eucalyptus, pepper, and olive trees, miniature date palms—it was like a dream of a place, not a place itself.

This is what it was supposed to be,
she thought.

The Hollywood she'd always imagined, the Hollywood of her childhood imagination, assembled from newsreels: Kay Francis in silver lamé and Clark Gable driving down Sunset in his Duesenberg, everyone beautiful and everything possible.

That world, if it ever really existed, was long gone by the time she'd arrived on that Greyhound a half-dozen years ago. It had been swallowed up by the clatter and color of 1953 Hollywood, with its swooping motel roofs and the shiny glare of its hamburger stands and drive-ins, and its descending smog, which made her throat burn at night. Sometimes she could barely breathe.

But here in this tucked-away courtyard, deep in Beachwood Canyon, it was as if that Old Hollywood still lingered, even bloomed. The smell of apricot hovered, the hush and echoes of the canyons soothed. You couldn't hear a horn honk, a brake squeal. Only the distant
ting-ting
of window chimes somewhere. One might imagine a peignoired Norma Shearer drifting through the rounded doorway of one of the bungalows, cocktail shaker in hand.

“It's perfect,” Penny whispered, her heels tapping on the Mexican tiles. “I'll take it.”

“That's fine,” said the landlady, Mrs. Stahl, placing Penny's cashier's check in the drooping pocket of her satin housecoat and handing her the key ring, heavy in her palm.

The scent, thick with pollen and dew, was enough to make you dizzy with longing.

And so close to the Hollywood sign, visible from every vantage, which had to mean something.

She had found it almost by accident, tripping out of the Carnival Tavern after three stingers.

“We've all been stood up,” the waitress had tut-tutted, snapping the bill holder at her hip. “But we still pay up.”

“I wasn't stood up,” Penny said. After all, Mr. D. had called, the hostess summoning Penny to one of the hot telephone booths. Penny was still tugging her skirt free from its door hinges when he broke it to her.

He wasn't coming tonight and wouldn't be coming again. He had many reasons why, beginning with his busy work schedule, the demands of the studio, plus negotiations with the union were going badly. By the time he got around to the matter of his wife and six children, she wasn't listening, letting the phone drift from her ear.

Gazing through the booth's glass accordion doors, she looked out at the long row of spinning lanterns strung along the bar's windows. They reminded her of the magic lamp she had had when she was small, scattering galloping horses across her bedroom walls.