The best-selling mystery writer Lawrence Block proves his point with the twenty outstanding stories he has chosen for this volume. For fans of the traditional mystery, there’s T. Jefferson Parker’s “Easy Street,” in which a brother’s visit uncovers family secrets. In Jeremiah Healy’s “A Book of Kells,” a detective draws on his Irish heritage to solve a crime. And in Clark Howard’s “Under Suspicion,” a detective’s investigation of the murder of his best friend’s daughter hits too close to home. However, many of the stories are concerned more with the personalities and motives surrounding the crime than with the crime itself. In Joyce Carol Oates’s “The Girl with the Blackened Eye,” we see a crime from the young victim’s point of view. Jennifer Anderson’s “Things That Make Your Heart Beat Faster” examines the hardships one rookie cop endures while solving her first crime. And in Thomas Lynch’s “Blood Sport,” a young mortician faces the gruesome job of preparing a murdered friend for her funeral. As Block says: “Three things struck me about the stories in this year’s collection — their range, their variety, and their exceptionally high quality. Crime fiction has always been a broad and inclusive field, but these stories epitomize its breadth, running from the literary to the retro-pulp. The field has always showcased new talent, and a full two thirds of this year’s winners are by writers previously unknown to me. I’ve been reading short crime for half a century, and writing it for almost that long, and I’m still blown away by how very fine these stories are.”

Bestselling novelist James Ellroy introduces this year’s collection of the finest mystery writing. Many of the contributors herein are novelists themselves, displaying their talents in short story form: Michael Connelly tells a fatal tale of revenge in “Two-Bagger.” In Joe Gores’s “Inscrutable,” the Feds beat the Mafia at their own game. Stuart Kaminsky demonstrates how horribly wrong things go when a robber gets cocky in “Sometimes Something Goes Wrong.” And Robert B. Parker shows just how important Jackie Robinson’s fans can be in “Harlem Nocturne.” Also featured are veterans of the short story form and favorites of this series. Brendan DuBois’s “A Family Game” introduces a former Mafia family trying to lead a normal life in the Witness Protection Program. Joyce Carol Oates tells a chilling tale of a crush taken too far in “The High School Sweetheart.” A tenant sneaks into the murder crime scene next door in Michael Downs’s “Man Kills Wife, Two Dogs.” Readers will be captivated by all the stories herein, whether by famed novelists or masters of the short story