Otto Penzler, The Best Mystery Stories of the Year: 2024

This is the fourth volume in the Best Mystery Stories of the Year series, edited by Otto Penzler and featuring an introduction by this year’s guest editor, Anthony Horowitz. The collection contains 19 stories originally published in 2023 and one bonus story from the past. Of the modern tales, I particularly enjoyed those by Fleur Bradley (“How to Teach Yourself to Swim”), Jeffery Deaver (“The Lady in My Life”), Shells Legoullon (“The Backwoods”), Victor Methos (“Kill Night”), Dan Pope (“Snow Over Hartford”), Anna Scotti (“It’s Not Even Past”), Archer Sullivan (“Good Harvest”), and Andrew Welsh-Huggins (“Wonder Falls”). All but one of those names are new to me, and I mention them here at such length primarily as a record for myself of authors to watch. Of those eight stories, the one I think I’ll remember most is Archer Sullivan’s “Good Harvest,” which begins auspiciously with a nine-year-old watching her mother dig a grave by moonlight. The bonus story in this volume is “The Suicide of Kiaros” by L. Frank Baum, first published in 1897. It's interesting reading as a historical artifact. I think if it were written today, however, I’d expect a Hitchcockian twist at the end rather than the the more straightforward conclusion Baum provides.

Other books in the series:

2021 (guest editor Lee Child)
2022 (guest editor Sara Paretsky)
2023 (guest editor Amor Towles)