In its brief existence, THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES has established itself as a peerless suspense anthology. Compiled by the best-selling mystery novelist Ed McBain, this year’s edition boasts nineteen outstanding tales by such masters as John Updike, Lawrence Block, Jeffery Deaver, and Joyce Carol Oates as well as stories by rising stars such as Edgar Award winners Tom Franklin and Thomas H. Cook. The 1999 volume is a spectacular showcase for the high quality and broad diversity of the year’s finest suspense, crime, and mystery writing

Ten years ago: Gabriel Knight, age 11, takes a bike ride to the park and becomes one of the… disappeared. When Teri Knight answers a knock at the front door, she discovers her son Gabriel standing in the doorway. Only it can’t be her son. Gabe took a bike ride to the park ten years ago, at age 11, and became one of the disappeared. He would be 21 now and this boy… this boy is the same age as Gabe was when he went missing. Except for the color of his eyes, he looks exactly like her son. He’s wearing the same clothes her son wore the day he disappeared. He even refers to her as Mom. If he is Gabe, how is that possible? Why hasn’t he aged? Where has he been for ten years? And why is he so weak and in apparent ill health? Teri is struggling with each of these questions and barely getting to know this boy who has arrived so unexpectedly, miraculously at her door, when a team of armed men arrive at the house in search of the boy. For Gabe and Teri the clock is now ticking - and time is running out. Who are these men? What do they want? Is this boy really Teri’s lost son, Gabe? A dark thriller with a highly unusual and inventive twist