Collections & Anthologies

Guest edited by S. A. Cosby, best known for Razorblade Tears, with series editor Steph Cha, author of the Juniper Song series, this weighty volume needs pride of place on every bedside table. For the insomniacs. For those who enjoy flipping between suspense and mystery genres. For those who like their crime fiction bite-sized. And for those who just love being terrified. Many of the stories rely on lying, creating falsehood, like Rebecca Turkewitz’s “Sarah Lane’s School for Girls,” in which a murder at a Vermont school provokes one lie after another. In Megan Abbott’s “Scarlet Ribbons,” a teen takes it upon herself to visit the Hoffman House one night, where a family was horribly murdered years ago. The results? Far worse than we could have dreamed. In Tananarive Due’s “Rumpus Room” a young mother in southern Florida does everything she can to keep her daughter, but the older gentleman she is meant to care for is so creepy she’s quickly packing. “These days the market for short stories is eroding like a thin strip of beach in a hurricane and I think that’s a shame,” writes Cosby in the introduction. He may be right, but until they completely disappear, we still have the Best American Mystery and Suspense series to enjoy.

It wasn’t until I began reviewing for firstCLUE that I read mystery anthologies. Now I’m a firm believer that everyone needs an anthology such as this one on their bedside table. The many stories collected here provide the perfect opportunity to relax, unwind, and travel near and far. As Unger writes in the introduction: “…this form [short fiction] has a special kind of magic, the ability to transport you quickly, intensely, to capture character, time, place, and story with immediacy and deliver it all with a punch.” And where our expectation of crime novels is that everything will be resolved in the end, short stories often finish more enigmatically, giving readers something to ruminate about. Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier, for example, transports us, in “Ripen,” to the Virgin Islands, where a politician’s arrogance leads to his dramatic downfall. A. J. Jacono’s “When We Remember Zion” tells the intensely chilling tale of a mentally ill abductor who delivers his hostage’s baby. We accompany an older veteran—now a professional criminal—who tries to escape from a botched job by returning to his childhood cabin in James A. Hearn’s “Home is the Hunter.” “New York Blues Redux,” by William Boyle, depicts a Brooklyn dive bar that becomes the setting for a night of tragedy. Congratulations to editors Unger and Cha for producing a volume as rich in diversity as it is compelling in its narratives.