The Best American Mystery Stories 2013

Twenty pulse-pounding tales of murder, deception, and dark vengeance, handpicked from the year's best American crime fiction.

A best-selling novelist and Edgar Award winner, Lisa Scottoline brings her mastery of the thriller genre as well as her wit and heart to this collection of the must-reads in mysteries. 

Series editor Otto Penzler culls twenty standout selections from thousands of American and Canadian submissions. Guest editor Lisa Scottoline assembles tales that pair cold forensic calculation with unexpected emotional heft.

In California, Michael Connelly sends Detective Harry Bosch into a cold case reopened by a database match. Eileen Dreyer sets a drama amid the celebrating crowds of Times Square, while Joyce Carol Oates follows an isolated teenage girl drawn to an older, watchful boy.

• Police Procedural: In New Orleans, Detective Joseph Savary canvasses Felicity Street after a daylight shooting at Jeanfreau's Grocery, met only by the stone-cold silence of a neighborhood protecting its own.
• Private Investigator: Detective John Quincannon, working 1890s San Francisco, tracks a blackmailer into a Gunpowder Alley cigar shop, only to find the suspect shot dead inside a bolted room.
• Noir: A diner regular watches a twelve-year-old girl vanish into a red Escalade at three in the morning, pulling him and an ex-wife into a deadly reckoning.
• Hard Boiled: Stranded by a blinding Four Corners dust storm, a heavily armed wheelman hunkers down in a remote motel alongside an infant and a battered mother.
• Also by This Author: Everywhere That Mary Went, Final Appeal and Daddy's Girl.