Best Detective Stories of the Year: 14th Annual Collection ed. David C. Cooke (Dutton, 1959, LC:46-5872, $2.95, 255pp, hc)
- Also available in the U.K. (Boardman 1960 as Best American Detective Stories of the Year: 10th Annual Collection.
- 9 · Suppose You Were on the Jury · Thomas Flanagan · ss Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine March 1958
- 25 · Over There—Darkness · William O’Farrell · ss Sleuth Mystery Magazine October 1958
- 41 · Sinner or Saint · Donald E. Westlake · nv Mystery Digest December 1958
- 64 · The Dark Corner · Frank Ward · na Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine January 1959
- 116 · Ambitious Cop · Jack Dillon · ss The Saturday Evening Post December 13 1958
- 134 · Wife Missing [Department of Dead Ends] · Roy Vickers · nv Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine March 1958
- 163 · To Crack a Safe · J. W. Aaron · ss Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine February 1958
- 183 · One More Clue [John J. Malone] · Craig Rice · nv Manhunt April 1958
- 205 · The Day the Children Vanished · Hugh Pentecost · nv This Week April 20 1958 (+2 [serialized; continued in next 2 issues]), as “The Children Vanished”
- 239 · Your Witness · Helen Nielsen · ss Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine December 1958
David Cooke gets points for casting his net widely, albeit in 1958, there still were a slew of crime-fiction magazines and a number of others (such as even Good Housekeeping) which still included fiction in their mix...that great winnowing on both counts seemed to get fierce in the '60s and '70s, though Cooke has occasion to note the folding of Collier's. Two each from the currently (in 2023) still-surviving CF magazines, Queen's and Hitchcock's (long after the deaths of their namesakes), and one each from all his other sources, including newspaper syndicated supplement This Week (serializing a novelet seems a bit excessive). Perhaps a pity he didn't find anything from The Saint nor even Robert Lowndes's low-paying but talent-nurturing Double-Action Detective and Mystery...if he considered any, perhaps "squeezed out" by Frank Ward's novella (unlike successors such as "Anthony Boucher", Cooke doesn't provide us with an Honorable Mentions list).
The lead-off story, "Suppose You Were on the Jury" by Thomas Flanagan, is a slightly odd choice...perhaps caught Cooke's eye by being almost stereotypically EQMM brittle, but with a sort-of twist ending...sadly, exactly the one which is suggested in the conversation that takes up most of the earlier text of the story. I think Cooke might also be at least as partial to courtroom drama as any midcentury CF editor.
The closing story, Helen Nielsen's "Your Witness" (from AHMM) is also a courtroom procedural with a somewhat less (but not much less) telegraphed twist, and as one of only two (apparently) stories written by women in this volume, does feature a rather more detailed look into the female protagonist's psyche than the other stories read or reread so far...and Cooke has the good sense to put these two stories as bookends to the rest of the anthology. (Craig Rice being the other woman, with a Malone story that Cooke took to be her last completed story...whether trunk stories or not, including ghost jobs possibly when not definitely, work continued to appear under her byline.)
"Over There--Darkness" by William O'Farrell is reaching a little harder toward being literary art, and gets most of they way there...Cooke liked this one enough to reprint it in the next year's 15-year retrospective (as noted below), and it is all-'round the second-best story so far in the book, even if the blithe arrogance of the elderly woman protagonist is portrayed in rather stark shades. But there are Donald Trumps in the world, an some of them are women, if perhaps rather fewer so utterly lacking in self-awareness. Sleuth was a short-run Mystery Writers of America-sponsored magazine, essentially published by the same folks, at HSD Publications, who produced AHMM, and with a similar strong editorial input as Flying Eagle's Manhunt and stablemates from the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, which also had an In at Hitchcock's.
And the best story so far is the young Donald Westlake's not quite sentimental...but like some of his other short fiction, running right up to the line of sentimentality...caper story "Sinner or Saint"...which Cooke all but apologizes for including as not being primarily a detective nor mystery story, when it's about a long con that doesn't quite work out as intended...but not at all for the reasons that the future Parker nor Dortmunder jobs might not pan out. Westlake did include this one in one of his few collections, A Good Story and Other Stories, so perhaps he liked it, or at least liked it enough among his early work to want to make an example of it (my copy of that collection is currently in a storage box). It appeared in Mystery Digest, a decent magazine that ran almost exactly six years, from May '57 to May/June '63, edited and published by Rolfe Passer for most of its run, with Westlake the credited editor of a few 1959 issues. I first held a copy of the magazine after buying a stack of them, along with the late Westlake's other fiction magazines for the most part, from Abigail Westlake, through an offer advertised by Lawrence Block...meeting both (after a brief, almost wordless encounter some years before when Block had come into a bookstore I was working in to sign copies of one of his novels) was an honor, if one tinged, obviously, with sadness).
More to come.
previous Best Detective Stories of the Year volume entries:
The best short stories of 1978 (the year I started reading new short fiction in earnest) as judged by the annual editors...
for more of today's Short Story Wednesday reviews
It maddens me that I did not buy these annual collections back in the 1960s and 1970s when they were common and available. This looks good!
ReplyDeleteCheck your mail near the end of the week. The Easter Bunny sent you something.
As always, too kind, George! If you'd still like a copy of this one, I'm sure that could be arranged.
ReplyDeleteI'm always open to good books! Hope you enjoy your Easter goodies!
ReplyDeleteThese look like a great series of books. They don't write 'em quite like they used to!
ReplyDeleteNot quite like they used to...but sometimes, intentionally or not!
ReplyDeleteI'm fond of Year's Best volumes, even when they are Highly Arguable...