The Best American Mystery Stories 2010

This collection of short stories is part of a series called The Best American Series edited by Otto Penzler. Penzler and others narrowed the submissions down to fifty and they passed those along to the guest editor for the 2010 edition, Lee Child. Anyone familiar with either of those two names will pick this book up expecting to be thoroughly entertained. What I had also hoped for was to find some new authors whose work I had not read before. I'm always trying to add new authors to my list of favorites. This book certainly lived up to my expectations.

There are twenty stories here that cover a wide range of styles and subject matter. The authors included are as follows; Gary Alexander, R. A. Allen, Doug Allyn, Mary Stewart Atwell, Matt Bell, Jay Brandon, Phyllis Cohen, John Dufresne, Lyndsay Faye, Gar Anthony Haywood, Jon Land, Dennis Lehane, Lynda Leidiger, Phillip Margolin, Chris Muessig, Albert Tucher, Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Wallace, Mike Wiecek, and Ryan Zimmerman. As is always true with any collection of short stories, some of these appealed to me more than others, although I will say that the overall quality was very good. These are very short descriptions of seven of my favorites.

Doug Allyn - AN EARLY CHRISTMAS - police procedural - an attorney's car goes off the road and he is killed when it burns. Evidence at the scene indicates murder. The victim's soon-to-be ex-wife can't seem to help the detectives but she does seem to be hiding some information. There are many more books written by this author and I look forward to exploring them. Read more