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/

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A Divide in the Mystery Writing Community

In the first installment, I examined the culture wars taking place as the storytellers of history — and science fiction — have been changing from the predominately white male narrators. Compared to the puppy wars in science fiction, the mystery writing community, to its credit, undergone had a milder form of this fight. 

Alpha-male mysteries and thrillers have played a prominent role in the history of the genre. Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and a thousand of their progeny confronted femme fatales, many times with a sharp slap. Dashiell Hammett is a favorite writer of mine, but he could be fairly racist, especially towards Chinese-Americans. 

Beyond detective noir, mostly two-fisted male heroes have also dominated the mystery/thriller genre from the classics, The 39 Steps, by John Buchan (1915) and Rogue Male, by Geoffrey Household (1939) to Lee Child's Jack Reacher series (ongoing). 

Frankly, a lot of stories have been either updated Phillip Marlowe or Sherlock Holmes, a pair of detectives with an outsized influence on mysteries and literature. If those stories are good, they are good. But too often, they are too many. I have recently been included in an anthology of humorous short mysteries. Along with a dozen faux Marlowes, there was one Holmes pastiche.

Do classic mystery and thriller tales and authors of a narrow demographic continue to crowd out more diverse voices and newer directions of mystery?

Penzler's first Best American Mystery Stories anthology.

Cha Versus Penzler

Before describing their dispute, let me introduce the two key players. Otto Penzler, author, owner of the famous Mysterious Bookshop, and super-editor, has since 1997 put out annual collections of the best short mysteries. He is ensconced in New York City. Steph Cha, is a mystery novelist and through the Los Angeles Times, is the mystery specialist at the Los Angeles Review of Books. 

In November 2018, Linda Fairstein, who has been for years a New York Times bestseller of mysteries, was announced as the Grand Master of the upcoming annual meeting from the Mystery Writers of America. Fairstein is also an ex-prosecutor, and was notably the head of the sex crimes office at the time of the prosecution of the individuals who became known as The Central Park Five. Although the five have been released from prison for their crimes and legally exonerated, Fairstein maintains their guilt. 

The week of Fairstein's annoucement, mystery writer Attica Locke, who at the time was working on a Netflix series* about the Central Park Five, made this tweet about Fairstein. 

"#MWA As a member and 2018 Edgar winner, I am begging you to reconsider having Linda Fairstein serve as a Grand Master in next year's awards ceremony. She is almost singlehandedly responsible for the wrongful incarceration of the Central Park Five." 

Locke went on to term Fairstein's recognition as "a racist action."

*The series, When They See Us, which would go on to be a popular and award-winning success, would not debut until months after this controversy began.

The MWA quickly withdrew Fairstein from being the Grand Master.

Steph Cha of the Los Angeles Times weighed in on this controversy. Of Fairstein, "Her presence among us (those at mystery conferences) should be the scandal of every conference — it probably would've been earlier if there had been more crime writers of color when the Five were exonerated in 2002." 

Cha extended her criticisms toward the homogeny of MWA. "While the mystery writing community has changed somewhat over the last few years, it has long been embarrassingly white and, if not outright conservative, less than progressive in its collective values (hello hero cops and beautiful dead girls)."

Penzler fired back, in part defending Fairstein, in part attacking Cha. 

"Regrettably, I have only recently become aware of this disgusting turn of events. I was not in New York and had no cell phone service when you cowardly and reprehensibly snatched the Edgar Award from Ms. Fairstein, evidently cowed by racially charged and utterly misinformed letters from Attica Locke and Steph Cha."

"Cha boasted of her ignorance, admitting that she did not know that Ms. Fairstein had been a long-serving and honored assistant district attorney who headed the Sex Crimes Prosecution Office had never heard of the Central Park Five case and, furthermore, had no idea that Ms. Fairstein has written numerous books, most of which have been on national best-seller lists and whose work and reputation earned her a Grand Master Award-a situation that her employer, the Los Angeles Review of Books, should consider as she is, incredibly the editor of its crime section and patently unqualified for the position."

He railed against revoking Fairstein's recognition.

". . . [a] disgraceful decision, besmirching the reputation of one of the finest, most decent and honorable women I have ever known."

And concluded his letter with:

"I have been a proud member of MWA for more years than many of you [MWA Board] have been alive, but that pride no longer pertains. I am ashamed of you and of the organization for taking such a cowardly stance. For many years, I have welcomed the celebration of the incoming board with a party at the Mysterious Bookshop. The board does not deserve a celebration of any kind, and it would be hypocritical of me to host one. You are no longer welcome in my bookshop."

Cha responded:

"He calls me stupefyingly ignorant [Penzler used those words in a section I didn't quote] and unqualified to edit for LARB because I hadn't heard of Linda Fairstein. (He also says I hadn't heard of the Central Park Five, because his reading comprehension isn't very good.)"

Steph Cha's 2019 Suspense Thriller

The Aftermath

This battle continues to echo three years later. For the 2021 edition of the Best Mystery Story series, Otto Penzler was removed as chief editor. Steph Cha was given the reigns. 

Diversity of storytellers is a goal of hers. She said, "You might see more stories by women and writers of color (both categories I happen to belong to) in this series going forward, but not because of some secret agenda to sacrifice quality for diversity. I gravitate toward some stories over others because I have opinions, a worldview, and a pulse."

In another tweet Steph Cha went on to declare: "Here's what I have to say about Otto Penzler. On a personal level, I am of course pleased to take the reins away from a man who once called me stupid and racist and demanded I lose my editing job for criticizing Linda Fairstein. I'm only human."

Two Anthologies

Otto Penzler struck back by starting a separate anthology. While Steph Cha called her anthology The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021, Otto Penzler set up a competing anthology called The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021.

So this year we have two anthologies which, if you happened to blink, seem to be carrying on the same legacy. Steph Cha selected as her guest editor, the mystery writer, Alafair Burke. Otto Penzler went all-in with one of highest testosterone thriller writers, Lee Child.

Steph Cha promised more diverse voices and a more modern look at what mystery is. Her compilation self-consciously represents the philosophy and practice of inclusion. Her chosen editor, Alafair Burke, is a New York Times bestseller with 18 novels to her credit. She is 52 years old. (I include ages here because part of the story is the old versus the new.)

Otto Penzler went with the thriller writer, Lee Child, known for shoot 'em up action, 26 novels in all. I was genuinely disappointed when I learned Child's explanation for naming his hero Jack Reacher. Child was at a grocery store and was asked to reach for an item. He thought, if I fail as a writer, at least I'll have a career as a reacher. I imagined Jack Reacher was a pun on Jack Creature, referencing the beastly side of the character. Child is 67 years old.

I've read both of these anthologies and performed a demographic breakdown of the authors of the stories. For Penzler/Child's anthology, all 20 authors (21 when including a bonus short story by 19th century author Ambrose Bierce) were white. Among the whites, none were Latino or Latina. Fourteen were men and six were women. I couldn't always find the ages of the authors and sometimes had to fill in with imperfect estimates (undergraduate degree minus 22). With that imprecision in mind, they averaged 67 years old. Child's age!

For the Cha/Burke anthology, 12 story authors were female, 8 were male. There were 8 white non-Latinx, 4 Latinx, 5 black, 1 Latinx black, 1 South Asian, and one for whom I could not find info. Among the ages I could find and making estimates for the rest, they averaged 48 years of age. 

The game was on. Or afoot. In my next installment I review the Penzler's best mystery anthology. Between the two, they speak volumes in the differences between the old and the new. 

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I have made no judgment here regarding Fairstein or the Central Park Five while writing this. That is not to say I believe the Central Park Five should be considered guilty or Fairstein should be considered guilty of railroading them. I believe in reserving judgment on matters such as these until after I've studied the matter. At the time of writing this, I had not studied the matter sufficiently. Since writing this, having looked over the matter, it seems clear the the Central Park Five are innocent and were railroaded. Historically, this has happened often enough to not make it a surprise. 

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/

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