The World's Finest Mystery... (2 page)

 

 

Sarah Caudwell,
The Sibyl in her Grave
(Delacorte). The late author's final novel about Professor Hilary Tamar, whose gender must remain a mystery, is a literate, seriocomic puzzle for fans of Michael Innes and Edmund Crispin. Has any writer gained as formidable a reputation as Caudwell on the basis of four widely spaced novels?

 

 

Max Allan Collins's
The Hindenburg Murders
(Berkley). The creator of the Saint, Leslie Charteris, is the sleuth in this recreation of a 1937 disaster from our best fictionalizer of twentieth-century mysteries.

 

 

K. C. Constantine,
Grievance
(Mysterious). With Rugs Carlucci succeeding Mario Balzic as central character, the series about the Rocksburg, Pennsylvania, police continues to feature complex relationships, extraordinary dialogue, and unconventional mystery plotting.

 

 

Thomas H. Cook,
Places in the Dark
(Bantam). To say this cleverly crafted, lyrically written, time-shifting saga of two brothers from small-town coastal Maine bears comparison with the author's earlier
Breakheart Hill
and
The Chatham School Affair
should be recommendation enough.

 

 

Val Davis,
Wake of the Hornet
(Bantam). Archaeologist Nicolette (Nick) Scott, a specialist in the examination of historic aircraft, investigates a Pacific island mystery involving the Cargo Cults. This series started strong and has gotten better with each book.

 

 

Louise Doughty,
An English Murder
(Carroll & Graf). As the publisher's enthusiastic press releases emphasize, this is not your parents' English-village mystery. Subversive or not, it is a sensitive, complex, and remarkable novel.

 

 

Howard Engel,
Murder in Montparnasse
(Overlook). The sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of 1920s Paris come to life in this tale of the literary expatriate colony, first published in Canada in 1992.

 

 

Nicolas Freeling,
Some Day Tomorrow
(St. Martin's/Minotaur). An amazing novel from the viewpoint of a troubled, quirky, and brilliant retired Dutch botanist suspected of killing a teenage girl. Freeling always has been a specialized taste, but I'd recommend this one even to readers who could never warm up to series cops van der Valk and Castang.

 

 

Stuart M. Kaminsky,
The Big Silence
(Forge). Chicago policeman Abe Lieberman, one of the great characters of contemporary crime fiction, confronts a variety of personal and professional problems.

 

 

H. R. F. Keating,
The Hard Detective
(St. Martin's Minotaur). Tough woman detective Harriet Martens seeks a Biblically obsessed serial killer in a splendid police procedural from an unusual series— previous titles include
The Rich Detective, The Good Detective, The Bad Detective
, and
The Soft Detective
— joined by theme rather than a continuing character.

 

 

Elmore Leonard,
Pagan Babies
(Delacorte). Locales from Africa to Detroit and a pair of likably bent central characters combine for a model comic caper with a serious undertone.

 

 

Domenic Stansberry,
Manifesto for the Dead
(Permanent Press). A remarkable pastiche set in early-seventies Hollywood approximates Jim Thompson's style, while featuring the troubled novelist as the main character. (Another publication of interest to Thompson fans from the same small press is Mitch Cullin's chilling book-length poem,
Branches
.)

 

 

Paco Ignacio Taibo II,
Just Passing Through
, translated from the Spanish by Martin Michael Roberts (Cinco Puntos Press). A playful, unconventional, and astonishing documentary novel details the author's search for the truth about a Mexican anarchist and labor leader of the 1920s.

 

 

Donald E. Westlake,
The Hook
(Mysterious). In the grim vein of the author's great 1997 novel,
The Ax
, this tale of ghostwriting and murder brings the cutthroat publishing scene to life— and death.

 

 

Laura Wilson,
A Little Death
(Bantam). Three cases of mysterious death spanning half a century in the life of a British family form the puzzle in one of the most original whodunits of recent years. Presented in the U.S. as a paperback original after a 1999 publication in Britain, this first novel is my choice for book of the year.

 

 

SUBGENRES

Private-eye buffs had plenty to enjoy in 2000, including Amos Walker in Loren D. Estleman's
A Smile on the Face of the Tiger
(Mysterious), as distinguished as ever in style; newcomer Joe Barley, the academic gumshoe of Eric Wright's
The Kidnapping of Rosie Dawn
(Perseverance); Sharon McCone in Marcia Muller's
Listen to the Silence
(Mysterious); Ivan Monk in Gary Phillips's
Only the Wicked
(Write Way); Spenser in Robert B. Parker's tongue-in-cheek racing mystery
Hugger Mugger
(Putnam); the Nameless Detective in Bill Pronzini's
Crazybone
(Carroll & Graf); and Sam McCain in Ed Gorman's
Wake Up, Little Susie
(Carroll & Graf).

 

 

Fans of the amateur detective should seek out Simon Brett's
The Body on the Beach
(Berkley), first in a new series about the English village of Fethering; Joan Hess's satirical
A Conventional Corpse
(St. Martin's Minotaur), in which bookseller Claire Malloy ventures among the crime writers; Val McDermid's
Booked for Murder
(Spinsters Ink), a case for journalist Lindsay Gordon first published in Britain in 1996; Lee Harris's latest holiday mystery,
The Mother's Day Murder
(Fawcett); and Nora DeLoach's
Mama Pursues Murderous Shadows
(Bantam), about small-town South Carolina social worker Grace (Candi) Covington. Though Dorothy Gilman's
Mrs. Pollifax Unveiled
(Ballantine) concerns a spy rather than a sleuth, it fits well in this cozy company.

 

 

Those in search of the classical puzzle-spinning of the "Golden Age" can look to Parnell Hall's Cora Felton in her second crossword case,
Last Clue & Puzzlement
(Bantam); and Francis M. Nevins's Loren Mensing in the Queenian
Bene
fi
ciaries' Requiem
(Five Star), plus a bunch of British cops: Paul Charles's Christy Kennedy in the locked-room problem,
The Ballad of Sean and Wilko
(Do-Not/Dufour); Peter Lovesey's Peter Diamond in
The Vault
(Soho); Graham Thomas's Erskine Powell in
Malice in London
(Fawcett); and of course Colin Dexter's Chief Inspector Morse in his final case,
The Remorseful Day
(Crown), though it's more notable as a character study than a puzzle.

 

 

Police detectives from outside the classical tradition who were in strong form include James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux in
Purple Cane Road
(Doubleday), and Ken Bruen's Brant and Roberts in the satirical
Taming the Alien
(Do-Not/Dufour).

 

 

Historicals continue to have a growing mystery-market share. Anne Perry's two Victorian series, though not at their peak, were well enough represented by
Slaves of Obsession
(Ballantine), about William Monk, Hester Latterly, and Sir Oliver Rathbone; and
Half Moon Street
(Ballantine), about Thomas Pitt with wife Charlotte mostly offstage. A good addition to the continuing Watsonian pastiche industry was Val Andrews's
Sherlock Holmes at the Varieties
(Breese), one of several from this prolific author and publisher. Conrad Allen's Cunard Line detectives put to sea again in
Murder on the Mauretania
(St. Martin's Minotaur), about a 1907 maiden voyage. Steven Saylor's
Last Seen in Massilia
(St. Martin's Minotaur) is an exception to the general rule that Roman detectives like Gordianus the Finder shouldn't venture out of town. In an example of the past/present hybrid, William J. Mann's
The Biograph Girl
(Kensington) speculates that pioneering movie star Florence Lawrence didn't really die by suicide in 1938.

 

 

Considering that the second edition of my
Novel Verdicts: A Guide to Courtroom Fiction
(Scarecrow) was published early in the year (officially 1999 per the title page), I spent surprisingly little time in the company of the lawyer detectives, but I can recommend Andrew Pyper's first novel,
Lost Girls
(Delacorte); and Gini Hartzmark's noncourtroom
Dead Certain
(Fawcett) to my fellow legal buffs.

 

 

SHORT STORIES

The best book in an extraordinary year for single-author collections was Carolyn Wheat's
Tales out of School
(Crippen & Landru), which displays the lawyer-author's astonishing craftsmanship and versatility to maximum advantage. Close runners-up were the first two collections by Clark Howard, published within months of each other:
Crowded Lives and Other Stories of Desperation and Danger
(Five Star) and
Challenge the Widow-Maker and Other Stories of People in Peril
(Crippen & Landru).

 

 

Others of special merit from Crippen & Landru included Michael Collins's second volume of Dan Fortune private-eye stories,
Fortune's World
; Edward D. Hoch's
The Velvet Touch
(Crippen & Landru), about thief-of-the-valueless Nick Velvet; Marcia Muller's
McCone and Friends
, in which members of the San Francisco private eyes' extended family of co-workers take center stage; and Hugh B. Cave's
Long Live the Dead
, gathering the venerable writer's
Black Mask
stories. Among Five Star's notable offerings were Barbara D'Amato's
Of Course You Know that Chocolate Is a Vegetable and Other Stories
; Lia Matera's
Counsel for the Defense and Other Stories
; Dick Lochte's
Lucky Dog and Other Tales of Murder
; and two collections by Evan Hunter/Ed McBain:
Barking at Butter
fl
ies and Other Stories
and
Running from Legs and Other Stories
. Other publishers got into the act with Lawrence Block's 754-page
The Collected Mystery Stories
(Orion/Trafalger); and Peter Sellers's
Whistle Past the Graveyard
(Mosaic).

 

 

It was also a strong year for multiauthor collections. As you might expect at the close of a century, chubby historical reprint anthologies were numerous. Tony Hillerman and Otto Penzler edited
The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century
(Houghton Mifflin). Anne Perry edited a British equivalent,
A Century of British Mystery and Suspense
(Mystery Guild), to which I was honored to provide an introduction. Ed Gorman and I edited
Sleuths of the Century
(Carroll & Graf), which included authors of both nationalities plus Georges Simenon.

 

 

Star-studded original anthologies of note included the Adams Round Table's
Murder Among Friends
(Berkley); the Private Eye Writers of America's
The Shamus Game
(Signet), edited by that organization's indefatigable founder, Robert J. Randisi; the Mystery Writers of America's
The Night Awakens
(Pocket), edited by Mary Higgins Clark; and
Crime Through Time III
(Berkley), edited by Sharan Newman. More concentrated on newer names was the Brit noir volume
Fresh Blood 3
(Do-Not/Dufour), edited by Mike Ripley and Maxim Jakubowski.

 

 

The Tennessee publisher Cumberland House became a key player in the anthology game with theme volumes both original (
Murder Most Confederate
, edited by Martin H. Greenberg; and
Murder Most Medieval
, edited by Greenberg and John Helfers) and reprint (
Opening Shots: Great Mystery and Crime Writers Share Their First Published Stories
, edited by Lawrence Block; and
Murder Most Delectable
, edited by Greenberg).

 

 

My favorite anthology of the year, combining old stories and originals with an editorial apparatus of genuine reference value was Mike Ashley's
The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes
(Carroll & Graf). As with other volumes in the publisher's Mammoth series, though, I wish it were in more permanent form, i.e., hardcovers and better paper.

 

 

See Edward D. Hoch's bibliography for the year's full story on both anthologies and single-author collections.

 

 

REFERENCE BOOKS AND SECONDARY SOURCES

Book of the year in this category was surely Marvin Lachman's
The American Regional Mystery
(Crossover Press), a criminous cross-country tour by one of the most knowledgeable, readable, and reliable commentators on crime fiction.

 

 

Also of note are the collection of Charles Willeford's essays,
Writing & Other Blood Sports
(Dennis McMillan); Hugh Merrill's
The Red Hot Typewriter: The Life
and Times of John D. MacDonald
(St. Martin's Minotaur), which has undeniable value despite indifferent writing and a lousy title; Martha Hailey DuBose's
Women of Mystery: The Lives and Works of Notable Women Crime Novelists
(St. Martin's Minotaur); Otto Penzler's
101 Greatest Films of Mystery and Suspense
(Simon & Schuster); and Matthew Bunson's
The Complete Christie: An Agatha Christie Encyclopedia
(Pocket), doing a job you may think is redundant, but doing it well. A more original Christie volume, though one less likely to appeal to a wide readership, was Pierre Bayard's
Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?
(New Press), translated from the French by Carol Cosman— if you can wade through the academic jargon, Bayard has an interesting theory to promote.

 

 

They Wrote the Book: Thirteen Women Mystery Writers Tell All
(Spinsters Ink), edited by Helen Windrath, is both a valuable technical manual for writers and entertaining reading for fans; while the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association's
100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century