The Best American Mystery Stories 1999

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Now that Best American Mystery Stories has its third annual volume, two elements have accrued that were impossible when we were just starting up. Like so many sets of circumstances, they are undeniably linked yet totally disparate.

The first is that the books have enjoyed delightful success (for which I, my publisher, and the contributors sincerely thank you). Weeks on local best-seller lists and on the national best-seller compilations of Ingram, America’s largest book wholesaler, bring a flush of gratitude and excitement that is unlike most other human experience. If anything of a similar nature has occurred in your life, you know precisely what I mean. If it hasn’t (and I truly hope it does), trust me, it brightens your life.

“Did we make the list?”

“Yes, we’re number five.”

“YESSS!”

Indelibly connected with such euphoric moments, and patently a vital part of them, is the review attention from magazines and newspapers. When someone calls and says, “Did you see the review in whatever-publication-that-I-haven’t-ever-read-before-in-my-life-but that-is-now-my-absolute-favorite-publication-in-all-the-land?” I say, “No-but-would-you-read-it-to-me-please-but-first-tell-me-is-it-good-or-bad?” in about a tenth of a second, each syllable running into the next so utterly that I’m certain the entire sentence is incomprehensible gibberish (of which I have been accused even when enunciating impeccably, I’ll concede, but that’s not really the point).

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