Reviewing Cha's The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021

In my first three installments I looked at culture wars in history and literature, how they have popped up in mystery writing resulting in the schism of the year's best mystery stories into two very different volumes, and then went on to review Otto Penzler's The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021. 

Here, in the final installment, I look at Steph Cha's The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021. Cha was selected to officially take over the Penzler's series. She promised to include a more diverse authorship. Indeed, Penzler's 2021 anthology was composed of 21 white (and no Latinx among these) authors. His 2020 anthology had 20 white authors (and, again, no Latinx) and 2019 was the same. Cha's first anthology had stories from 8 white non-Latinx, 4 Latinx, 5 black, 1 Latinx black, 1 South Asian, and one for whom I could not find background 

Penzler is 79 years old. Cha is 35. They have different views as to what represents the best in mystery fiction. Penzler's anthology lean heavily on old school detective and police narratives. I had to think hard as to whether even one of his story selections did not have violence at its core (there were two).  

This brings me to a general strength of Cha's collection: the variety of crime. Being an illegal immigrant, victimization by con artists, faking an application to get a child into a better school, stalking: these are weighty issues with important stories to tell. 

Cha chose Alafair Burke as her guest editor. Burke has published 18 mystery novels. She is Asian-American and the daughter of the famous author James Lee Burke (who had a story in Penzler's anthology). Or maybe people will begin saying James Lee is the father of the famous Alafair Burke.

In my previous post I railed against the Introduction by Lee Child in Penzler's anthology. While Child asked what is a short story? Burke asked what does it mean to say something is the best? The notion that the best is subjective is fairly basic and I wanted to sneer at the simplistic conclusion she made but, going over the stories in these anthologies I related deeply to the statement.

As Burke notes, people argue over the Academy Award as though the Best Picture is some kind of magic dart that lands on its target, that which is, indeed, the best picture. It is an imperfect opinion. When James Cameron visited the deepest part of the ocean in a bathysphere, I fantasized about keeping him down there until he agreed to give his Oscar to Curtis Hanson for L.A. Confidential.

I present my judgment on these stories. Why should anyone care about my opinion? The answer is that as a reader I am an audience member. As a writer I strive to make the audience cheer, to think, or to empathize in a way that splits their chests open to synchronize our beating hearts. Of course, I cannot do that for everyone. Not even if I was the greatest writer ever. So, as an author, I do my soft shoe shuffle and bow. Then my readers applaud. Or they don't. Hell, not everybody loves Fred Astaire, a hoofer from Omaha.

Burke goes on to review Kurt Vonnegut's rules for what makes a story great and in doing so, introduces each of the stories in the collection with love. A classy introduction. 

Cha's entry into the Best Mystery Stories series

The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021, a Review

Again, the stories are presented in alphabetical order by the author's surname. I suppose this is to avoid the appearance of favoritism. I wonder if I would be Ortiz or Hill Ortiz in such a set. (Hill Ortiz is my preference. In Puerto Rico, the father's surname is appended by the mother's surname. I am the son of two families.)

First up is Jenny Bhatt with Return to India, a complex story, told from the point of view of imperfect witnesses, of an immigrant worker who snaps. Strong emotional examination of isolation.

Christopher Bollen, SWAJ. The title is Jaws spelled backward. A young man in Amity Island, New York, witnesses the events in a town under siege by a shark. I really didn't like this piece. It was Jaws without any of the on-the-ocean parts. For me it was clever but unengaging.

Nikki Dolson, Neighbors. A study of a neighborhood destroyed by con artists. Sharp details, well-written, bittersweet.

E. Gabriel Flores, Mala Suerte. Two friends have bad luck trying to dispose of a body. Excellent writing.

Alison Gaylin, Where I Belong. A homeless teen becomes prey to those who would rescue him. Has the feeling of James M. Cain. Gaylin made it into both anthologies.

Gar Anthony Haywood, With Footnotes and References. A great, twisty (and twisted) story about selling school papers to rich kids.

Ravi Howard, The Good Thief, is a bittersweet story about the unusual gift a mother gives to her son on the evening of his execution. Excellent. One of my favorites.

Gabino Iglesias, Everything Is Going to Be Okay. In the background of the COVID lockdown, a father wants basic health care for his child. An insider's eye for details. 

Charis Jones, Green-Eyed Monster. A killer recounts the final evening with his successful wife and what envy drove him to do. Not one of my favorites. The characters seemed stock.

Preston Lang, Potato Sandwich Days. I have to recuse myself from judging this story about a man who would do anything to get his favorite sandwich from a fast food restaurant. In the early 90s, I was at a Burger King in Miami Beach when a man blew up over this sort of thing. The Nazis were in town protesting the local holocaust memorial and I suspect he was one of them. No violence occurred, still I get post-trauma stress disorder over this. I can't handle the fast food scene in Michael Douglas's Falling Down, either.

Aya de León, Frederick Douglass Elementary. A black woman falsifies her address to get her child into a better school, but is the school really better? This well-done story is helped along if you know the account of the woman who was jailed for this offense. 

Kristen Lepionka, Infinity Sky. A well-written, comic-manic piece about the misadventures of a woman who wants to take in the view from a penthouse suite. One of my favorites.

Laura Lippman, Slow Burner. The discovery of a burner phone leads a wife to discover her husband's secrets, culminating in murder. Masterfully told.

Joanna Pearson, Mr. Forble. A mother is frantic: her son is not quite normal. A birthday party turns violent. Well-written and disturbing.

Delia C. Pitts, The Killer. In a small town in Georgia, a private eye is shepherding a mother and a child who have been targeted by the mob. A killer comes to town looking for them but they get by with a little help from some friends. Vivid and atmospheric.

Eliot Schrefer, Wings Beating. A father goes on vacation with his thirteen-year-old son where the son encounters prejudice. The father takes revenge. "Take revenge" pieces mostly fall flat with me, especially in cases where the response exceeds the provocation. 

Alex Segura, 90 Miles. Cuban exiles take a perilous journey to America, made worse by the faithless human smuggler who helped launch them. Strong atmosphere and poignant.

Brian Silverman, Land of Promise. A local hero has to live with the knowledge behind what really happened. Emotionally gripping. 

Faye Snowden, One Bullet, One Vote. In the segregated south, a black woman stands up for her right to vote. Powerful and I found myself constantly rooting for her.

Lisa Unger, Let Her Be. Unger knows how to perform psychological autopsies on the living. (Autopsies without the ick.) Mesmerizing. My favorite story of either anthology. 

The strength of the Cha/Burke anthology is the variety of human experiences. Here are stories of crimes big and small. Switching between such a range of viewpoints keeps each store fresh. My review of this work uses terms like emotional involvement far more frequently than with the Penzler collection which had more gut punches. These stories were vibrant and reflected on today's issues. I did miss having some of the older school stories such as the Paretsky piece from the other work. 

The strength of the Penzler/Child anthology is that classic crime fiction, when well done, is thrilling. However, when it is mediumly-well done, it feels repetitive. 

I was convinced by these two anthologies that there are more than 40 best pieces out there. Even the ones I didn't like had merit. Furthermore, I've read a few worthy pieces during this past year that were not included. I suppose a reviewer always feels this way. I read the five stories up for the past year's Edgar for Best Short Story and all of them were top-notch. I suggest the anthologists expand their honorable mention lists.

Both books are worth the price of admission and an avid mystery fan will have much to enjoy. I would say about 10 of the pieces in Penzler's work represented great classic mystery stories, something I always love to read. However, I would have to give the nudge to Cha's anthology. The wonderment of the range of the stories kept every story fresh, even the ones that did not particularly thrill me.

The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021

Contents:

Jenny Bhatt, Return to India

Christopher Bollen, SWAJ. 

Nikki Dolson, Neighbors

E. Gabriel Flores, Mala Suerte

Alison Gaylin, Where I Belong

Gar Anthony Haywood, With Footnotes and References

Ravi Howard, The Good Thief

Gabino Iglesias, Everything Is Going to Be Okay

Charis Jones, Green-Eyed Monster

Preston Lang, Potato Sandwich Days

Aya de León, Frederick Douglass Elementary

Kristen Lepionka, Infinity Sky

Laura Lippman, Slow Burner

Joanna Pearson, Mr. Forble

Delia C. Pitts, The Killer

Eliot Schrefer, Wings Beating

Alex Segura, 90 Miles

Brian Silverman, Land of Promise

Faye Snowden, One Bullet, One Vote

Lisa Unger, Let Her Be

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I have several short stories coming out soon, including ones in Mystery Magazine and Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine. A science fiction story came out in El Porvenir ¡Ya! Chicano Scifi Anthology. My late mother, a Chicano activist, would be proud.

Martin Hill Ortiz is a Professor of Pharmacology at Ponce Health Sciences University and has researched HIV for over thirty years. He is the author of four novels and numerous short stories and poems.

https://mdhillortiz.com/