A collection of the year's best mystery and suspense short fiction selected by #1 New York Times bestselling author and guest editor Jess Walter and series editor Steph Cha.
New York Times bestselling author and "superb storyteller" (Boston Globe), Jess Walter flexes his genre chops and selects twenty short stories that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.
November 1, 2022
The quality of this collection will be no surprise to readers of earlier volumes. With only one true detective story in the whole batch, Gar Anthony Haywood's "Return to Sender," and one closest to Golden Age conventions from old pro Dennis Lehane, this year's collection focuses more on suspense, with a welcome variety of perspectives and settings. "Detainment" is about a child detained by ICE. Two of the creepiest stories, by Tracy Clark and Jacqueline Freimor, are about serial killers, and there's a killer clown in Tod Goldberg's "A Career Spent Disappointing People." David Heska Wanbli Weiden's "Turning Heart" takes place on a Lakota reservation. Hector Acosta's "La Chingona" and Raquel V. Reyes's "Mata Hambre" drop in and out of Spanglish. Juliet Grames's "The Very Last Time" revolves around time travel, and Megan Pillow's "Long Live the Girl Detective" takes place partly inside a book. Thirty additional stories are recommended at the back of the book. VERDICT This first-rate collection asserts that the short story is alive and flourishing still.--David Keymer
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