FFB: BEST OF THE BEST DETECTIVE STORIES: Fifteen Years of Prize Stories edited by David C. Cooke (Dutton 1960)--1950s CF Week

David C. Cooke revived the U.S. annual series of best-of-the-years in short crime fiction (after a long interregnum after Carolyn Wells's two successive volumes in the 1930s) with E. P. Dutton in 1946...and in 1960, offered this extra volume as a culling from the first fifteen years of the series, including the most distinctive stories from each volume surveying the years 1945-59.  So, one prominent editor's core sampling of the latter '40s and '50s in the US, with allowances made not solely for personal taste but also balance (and while it's less likely he was too worried about this particularly for this retrospective, the representation of the range of magazines featuring crime fiction in this period is pretty good). 

The selection, of course, also tells us a bit about Cooke's predilections...

Contents from WorldCat:
Best of the best detective stories.
Author: David C Cooke
Publisher: New York, Dutton, 1960. 279 p.

Body in the barn / Margaret Manners -- from Argosy, 1945
The perfectionist / Margaret St. Clair -- Mystery Book, 1946
Revenge / Samuel Blas -- Collier's, 1947
Being a murderer myself / Arthur Williams -- Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, 1948
Blackmail / Allan Vaughan Elston -- The American Magazine, 1949
A boy's will / Q. Patrick -- EQMM, 1950
The kiss-off / John P. Foran -- Male Magazine, 1951
For value received / Richard Deming -- EQMM, 1952
The killer is loose / John and Ward Hawkins -- The Saturday Evening Post, 1953
Chinese puzzle / Richard Marsten -- Manhunt Magazine, 1954
First offense / Evan Hunter -- Manhunt, 1955
Three wives too many / Kenneth Fearing -- Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine, 1956
The day of the execution / Henry Slesar -- Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, 1957
Over there--darkness / William O'Farrell -- Sleuth, 1958
Bottle of death / Gilbert Ralston -- SEP, 1959

Two stories, and the only two of the fifteen, by women lead off the book, the Manners from the slick-paper format, no-longer pulp (and not yet quite a men's magazine) Argosy, the St. Clair from the first version of Mystery Book, a digest-sized attempt to give EQMM a run for the literate crime-fiction buff's patronage; the title folded rather quickly and was purchased or revived for a shortlived if rather handsome pulp magazine from the Thrilling Group.  The Blas story, his first, appeared in the general-interest "slick" magazine Collier's and was famously adapted for the Alfred Hitchcock Presents: television series. The Williams, apparently published under a pseudonym which was not used again, was rather widely anthologized (it is one of the two stories I'd read before in later anthologies, the other being the Deming); first of three EQMM stories. The Elston is from a Collier's stablemate, the more "family-oriented" The American Magazine, which was nonetheless a solid market for un-cozy crime fiction.  The Foran story is a good example of hardboiled caper fiction, first published in the men's sweat magazine Male, one of the several published by Martin Goodman (of Archie Comics notoriety...more for his business practices than for the comics' content) and featuring on staff the likes of Bruce Jay Friedman and Mario Puzo; for whatever reason, Male was mined a few times by Cooke over the years while no stories I've seen so far were taken from any of its competitors, which would soon include Argosy. The Hawkinses' story is the first of two from the more durable Collier's competitor, the SatEvePost; the next two, the two examples from hardboiled 1950s trendsetter Manhunt,  are both by the same writer, born Salvatore Lombino and best known in crime fiction as Ed McBain, legally by then Evan Hunter. The fine Fearing story is from the early issues of what would soon tweak its title to Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine; founded, as was Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, in 1956. AHMM would soon be joined, briefly, by a stablemate magazine project co-sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America, Sleuth.

Cooke can be seen here as drawn to stories which take commonly-employed formula plots and tweak them (usually) cleverly; and while there are a number of gulled fool men in the stories assembled here, the women come off a bit worse, on balance.  "Body in the Barn" and "Over There--Darkness" both deal with manipulative old women who won't let the facts get in the way of their intrigues in the lives of others; "Blackmail" outlines a pretty elaborate double-bottomed scheme on the part of younger, no less self-involved woman. Other women characters are too often simply condescended to in ways we as readers are supposed to endorse, though happily there are counter-examples, as well; the Foran story turns out to be memorable in this regard, if peripherally, while at least the villainess at the heart of the Fearing story can be seen to be behaving rationally and with motive, if insufficient motive drawn from rather evil premises, in dealing with her polygynous husband (shades of Charles Kurault); Cooke compares this story favorably to The Big Clock, and he might not be wrong. Collected here are the two best Evan Hunter short stories I've read so far, while still being essentially the weakest in the volume; instead of the usual glaring stupidity at the heart of, or at least offered as an important detail in, every other Hunter fiction I've read, the "Marsten" story is slight and excessively flip about the murder of a young woman, while "First Offense" is a not-bad but utterly unsurprising story which reads for all the world like a rendering in prose of a typical script from the CBS Radio series The Lineup (it made a jump to television after several seasons, but I haven't seen the latter version, nor the film spin-off Don Siegel directed...one wonders if the Hunter story was pitched to the series before or after publication in Manhunt).  The degree to which "Q. Patrick" wishes to avoid stating that his protagonist is a gay man, while portraying a self-indulgent "nelly" stereotype to a fault (and making of him as anti-empathic a twit as anyone else in the book) is almost comic in and of itself when read today; nonetheless, QP knows what he's about here. The wit and deftness employed by St. Clair, Henry Slesar, and Elston help elevate their stories, even if the Slesar suffers a bit by being too much like the Blas; the attention to fine quotidian detail also enlivens the Elston,  the Deming, "The Killer is Loose" and "Bottle of Death" as well as "The Kiss-Off."  I think subsequent series editors Anthony Boucher, Allen J. Hubin, and Edward Hoch did a better job in their volumes (the two from Brett Halliday...well, I've read only his first so far, and it was hobbled by no stories from EQMM at all, for reasons I can only guess at), but this gives a good sense of what some of the better work in short form was like in this decade and a half. 

Hubin, editing the series at the point it celebrated 25 years (New York, Dutton, 1971), consciously chose other stories to represent the first fifteen as well as subsequent ten years:

The man who lost his head, by B. Fischer.--

The wine glass, by A. A. Milne.--

The adventure of the President's half disme, by E. Queen.--

Murder in one scene, by Q. Patrick.--

The million-to-one chance, by R. Vickers.--

The orderly world of Mr. Appleby, by S. Ellin.--

Total recall, by J. Helvick.--

The dusty drawer, by H. Muheim.--

The attacker, by M. Wolson.--

The choice, by R. Deming.--

The conscience of the cop, by W. Fay.--

The last spin, by E. Hunter.--

Secret recipe, by C. Mergendahl.--

The day the children vanished, by H. Pentecost.--

Murder method, by T. Powell.--

For all the rude people, by J. Ritchie.--

My sister Annabelle, by De Forbes.--

The cattywampus, by B. Deal.--

Routine investigation, by R. Twohy.--

The locked house, by S. Barr.--

The yellow brick road, by G. Williams.--

The road to Damascus, by M. Gilbert.--

The sooey pill, by E. Slater.--

The lord of Central Park, by A. Davidson.--

A quarter century of the best: a checklist (p. 371-380)

--I haven't received my copy of this one yet, but judging by the stories I have read, I suspect the Hubin retrospective to be better, on balance, as well.

For more of the 1950s Crime Fiction week selections, please see Patti Abbott's blog.

July 1949

June 1951

May, 1947

And the actual issue featuring the St. Clair 
story,  May, 1946

Argosy for January, 1945

(Magazine cover images courtesy of Galactic Central.)

First of two issues, 1958; features the O'Farrell story. 

Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: the links

Up the Down Staircase

Below, the links to this week's reviews and citations; As always, please let me know in comments when I've missed yours or someone else's...and, as always, thanks to all our contributors and to you readers...a few more might be added over the course of the day.

Anne Billson: Kidnapped! Women in Action Films

Bill Crider: Up the Down Staircase  [trailer]

The Phantom Toolbooth

Brian Arnold: The Phantom Toolbooth

Brian Busby: A Bullet for Joey

B.V. Lawson: Media Murder

Dan Stumpf: Tiger in the Smoke

Ed Lynskey: Crime, Inc.

Elizabeth Foxwell: No Hands on the Clock

Hill Street Blues

Evan Lewis: The Gracie Allen Murder Case

George Kelley: Hill Street Blues

Iba Dawson: Beneath the Harvest Sky; Art and Craft

Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.: Holiday (1938 film)

Jack Seabrook: Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "Keep Me Company" (by Henry Slesar)

Jackie Kashian: Erin Foley and the Sklar Brothers on sports and sports telecasting

Leptirica

Jacqueline T. Lynch: Swell Guy (1946 film)

James Reasoner: Quick Draw McGraw

Jeff Flugel: Legend of the Lost

Jerry House: Leptirica

John Charles: Satanis: the Devil's Mass; Sinthia, the Devil's Doll

John Grant: The Banker; The Arsenal Stadium Mystery

Jonathan Lewis: Return of the Vampire; Last Train from Gun Hill; The Man Who Cheated Himself

Kate Laity: Giger Museum

Kliph Nesteroff: Jean Shepherd's Eulogy for Lenny Bruce

Border Incident

Laura: The Duel at Silver Creek; Sinbad the Sailor (1947 film); Lorna Doone (1951 film)

Lucy Brown: Suspicion (1941 film)

Marty McKee: Border Incident; Rage (1995 film)

Mystery Dave: Beyond the Time Barrier

Neer: Götterdämmerung

Patti Abbott: Judd for the Defense

Prashant Trikannad: Tommy Lee Jones

Randy Johnson: Hide-Out (1934 film); Last of the Badmen (aka Il tempo degli avvoltoi) 

Judd for the Defense

Rick: Lucy Gallant; Driftwood

Rod Lott: Grand Piano (2013 film); Final Exam

Ron Scheer: Border River

Sergio Angelini: Suture;  The Third Man and Fallen Idol

Stacia Jones: The Last of Mrs. Cheney; Stage Fright; As High as the Sky 

Legend of the Lost

Stephen Bowie: Television's New Classics

Yvette Banek: In and Out

Saturday Music Club on Mother's Day: Music my mother introduced me to...

The Glenn Miller Orchestra: "Serenade in Blue"


Joe Turner: "Honey Hush"


The Flamingos: "I Only Have Eyes for You"


Peggy Lee: "I Love Being Here with You"


Fats Domino: "Jambalaya"


Dinah Washington and Brook Benton: "Baby, You've Got What It Takes"


Loretta Lynn: "Harper Valley PTA"

FFB: a few words about older books about television: Harlan Ellison, John Leonard, Michael Arlen, Steven Scheuer

I've previously dealt, rather too quickly here as I will again today (ah, but for the luxury of non-exhausted time), with several works of criticism around television among other media, and have even touched on the companion to the Ellison volume quickly cited below.  But here are a few more paragraphs on a few more books about television that have had their impact, but have been not quite lost in the flood of materials since.

Harlan Ellison's The Glass Teat took its title from a column Ellison wrote for the Los Angeles "alternative" weekly paper the Free Press, and as a book and first collection of his nonfiction writing (Memos from Purgatory was a fictionalized memoir some years earlier), it helped make his reputation as a cultural critic (and Vice President Spiro Agnew's unreasonably effective attempts to have it quashed commercially did nothing to hurt that aspect of Ellison's career).  This book captures Ellison in his early mature writing, passionate about his subject (as he was making most of his money from the television industry at the time, and was deeply involved with several writers' organizations simultaneously), and losing some of the tentativeness of his earliest nonfiction writing collected elsewhere. Short essays on the wedges into corporate complacency the Smothers and other television producers and writers were attempting to bring to the most immediate emerging artform and entertainment industry at the time are cheerfully mixed in with descriptions of how to be disinvited to future tapings of The Dating Game.  (Ellison has since expressed some regret for the not yet adulterated sexism of some of this latter '60s writing, with further enlightenment awaiting him, but he had little else to apologize for.)

John Leonard was an utterly energetic and well-connected everything-reviewer throughout the latter '60s and up till his death a few years ago, at which time he was writing for a variety of magazines and still doing reviews for the CBS Sunday Morning magazine program. Most of his books are mixed collections of reviews and other essays about a wide range of work, but Smoke and Mirrors is one of the most (if not the most) focused on television among his collections, and it demonstrates his casual, wide-ranging intellect and insight into the interrelation of the arts and the rest of the public world, very much including politics and the shaping of public opinion. There are those who find Leonard too discursive, almost as if he was attempting to justify dealing with television on its terms to an intellectual audience, and there's some of that in his writing, but more of it simply seems as if this is how Leonard thought about the subjects at hand, and we could do worse (and too often have) with observers more focused and less capable of relevant asides.

Michael Arlen had an advantage in writing about television for The New  Yorker, in the Wallace Shawn years, where discursiveness to a genuine fault might be mistaken for profundity; nonetheless, he didn't tarnish the memory of his father, the fiction writer of the same byline (younger Arlen signed himself "Michael J. Arlen" in most circumstances), with his essays, particularly those collected in his first critically-hailed book of tv critiques The View from Highway 1 (unless we also count his earlier, more focused The Living Room War), which were also making some useful points about the medium, if less acutely than either Ellison or Leonard. Not being quite as pugnacious can temper the similes, but it can also sap the vigor of one's writing, particularly as it's experienced several decades later...nonetheless, given the shallowness of most television writing in all days (not helped of late when even the millimeter-deep Ken Tucker is judged, one hopes, too windy rather than too profound for the likes of the foundering Entertainment Weekly), the attempts to dig in exemplified in Arlen's work here are valuable. If perhaps more Worthy than first-rate.



Steven Scheuer was a pioneer in popular-culture books about television, as a syndicated columnist who produced the first volume of capsule film reviews for tv viewers in 1958, and thus kicked off a pocket industry (Leonard Maltin is only first among many to owe him a debt), and he continued to have pretty good ideas that one could wish were more thoroughly and consistently explored by him and others. As it is, TV: The Television Annual 1978-79 is a valuable assembly of facts about and reviews of materials first (or again) transmitted nationally in the U.S. in that "season" for the television industry, not shrinking from public-broadcasting national programming (there are kind and well-deserved words here for the too-often overlooked PBS anthology series Visions, as well as anger that its endowment had run out and its fourth season would be its last). This collection of data is reasonably comprehensive, including timelines and longer thematic essays and capsule reviews  (including of films making their national debut on various networks...one of the more glaring errors here comes in the incorrect precis given for the film The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane).  No one has had the advance-payments (and perhaps the staff) to replicate this so far, on the web nor in book form, and that's a pity (even the McFarland enthusiasts haven't quite followed this example). Another example of the rather scattershot support, by trade publishers, of pop-culture nonfiction by the end of the 1970s...in the wake of the surprising success of some of the "nostalgia" and pop-culture-history books over the previous decade-plus (including pioneering work by Richard Lupoff, Jim Harmon, and others). 

Please see Patti Abbott's blog for more of today's books.

Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: the links

Belle

Below, the links to this week's reviews and citations; As always, please let me know in comments when I've missed yours or someone else's...and, as always, thanks to all our contributors and to you readers...a few more might be added over the course of the day.

Anne Billson: That Darned Cat! (1965 film, adapting Undercover Cat by the Gordons)

One Million Years B.C.

Bill Crider: One Million Years B.C. (1966 film)  [trailer]

Brian Arnold: serials

B.V. Lawson: Media Murder

Calista and Jayme Lynn Blaschke: Babylon-5: "Soul Hunter"

Dan Stumpf: The Forty-Niners (1954 film)

Ed Lynskey: The Captive City

That Darned Cat...still  crime drama, even from '60s Disney...

Elizabeth Foxwell: Eight Witnesses

Evan Lewis: The Rebel (tv series)

George Kelley: Amazing Spider-Man 2

Iba Dawson: Belle

Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.: Nightmare Alley; Easy Living

Jack Seabrook: Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "Keep Me Company" (by Henry Slesar)

Jackie Kashian: W. Kamau Bell on Rocky and Bruce Lee films

Jacqueline T. Lynch: Free for All

Rocky King, Detective

James Reasoner: The Tonight Show: Steven Wright

Jerry House: Rocky King, Inside Detective: "Murder, PhD."

John Charles: Psycho-a-Go-Go

John Grant: Anna-Liisa;  The Four Just Men

Jonathan Lewis: The Mummy (1959 film)

Kate Laity: Black Sails

Ken Anderson: Films in Need of a DVD release

Kliph Nesteroff: the WFMU entries

Laura: Hi-Jacked; This Above All

Lucy Brown: The Glass Bottom Boat

Marty McKee: Vengeance is Mine; The Italian Connection

Mystery Dave: Escape from Tomorrow

Patti Abbott: The Brother from Another Planet

Prashant Trikannnad: The Best Action Movies of the '90s

Randy Johnson: Sparrows; Night of the Serpent (aka La notte dei serpenti)

Rick: The Five Best Daytime Dramas; The Naked Kiss

Rod Lott: Brides of Blood

Ron Scheer: The Proud Rebel; Jubal

Sergio Angelini: The Whole Truth

Stacia Jones: Joan Crawford: The Bride Wore Red; Montana Moon

Lord Peter Wimsey

Steven Bowie: Dobie Gillis continued

Walker Martin: Windy City Pulp Convention 2014

Yvette Banek: Lord Peter Wimsey: "The Nine Tailors"

FFB redux: Crime-fiction best of the year volumes

In the course of the same conversation, I asked Ed about the annual BOTY crime fiction volumes that were published by Carroll & Graf (rip) under a slightly shifting set of titles from volume to volume, with the last one in the series being the 1998 Year’s 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories: Seventh Annual Edition, which preceded the first (2000) St. Martin's/Forge volume, The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories (with the great Thomas Canty sinister watercolor cover painting).

The oddest thing about the Carroll and Graf series (and after St. Martin's dumped the ongoing series that World's Finest essentially began, C&G published two more along with companion novella anthologies before C&G was collapsed by the Publishers Group West failure) was that they were attributed, at least sometimes, to the "Editors of Mystery Scene," which meant, as Ed notes, himself, Martin Harry Greenberg, for at least one volume Joan Hess and at least one volume Robert Randisi, and Larry Segriff...while John Helfers and lately Sarah Weinman have augmented Gorman and Greenberg on their latter-day anthos. And that one (1) of the C&G annuals was published (in abridged form!) in mass-market paperback, out of the multiyear run...which seems strange, given how many sf & fantasy BOTY volumes have appeared over the years in mm pb, and even the Best American Short Stories volumes would do so into the 1970s, at least...but for some reason, as far as I can tell so far, only the Brett Halliday volume, #17, of the Dutton Best Detective Stories of the Year series, which ran from David Cooke's 1940s volumes up through to 1985 and Edward Hoch's volumes for Walker & Co. as The Year's Best Mystery and Suspense Stories, has ever been released as a mass market edition (because Halliday was more of a celebrity Name than Anthony Boucher or Allen Hubin or the other editors of that series, I guess), and with only the other, sadly shortlived, iBooks series, Jon Breen's Mystery: The Best of 2001 (and 2002), seem to be the only BOTYs in crime fiction to have been offered on the "regular" (as opposed to "Quality Paperback") racks...certainly, the Best American Mystery Stories series never has. (The Breen series was shuttered at least in part by the collapse of iBooks, after the death of its founder, Byron Priess; also notable how Ed Hoch and Jon Breen brought their nonfictional contributions to the Gorman/Greenberg projects after their series were finished...Breen's beforehand, as well.)

Or have I missed some? And does this indicate an slighting attitude toward short crime fiction on publishers' parts, going back decades?

This book (the Halliday BOTY) has been scanned in and can be read or downloaded, though I'm not sure if the copyright clearances have been made properly. I've contacted the literary agency for at least a few of the writers collected here, just to make sure they're aware of this.

Table of Contents:

TALMAGE POWELL Murder Method * 1
From Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine

HENRY SLESAR Welcome to our Bank * 29
From Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine

BABS H. DEAL Make My Death Bed * 38
From Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine

JAY FOLB AND HENRY SLESAR Victim, Dear Victim * 53
From Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine

C. B. GILFORD Murder, 1990 * 61
From Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine

C. L. SWEENEY, JR. A Question of Values * 79
From Manhunt Magazine

ARTHUR PORGES No Killer Has Wings * 86
From Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine

MATT TAYLOR McGarry and the Box-Office Bandits * 104
From This Week Magazine

PAUL W. FAIRMAN The Dark Road Home * 112
From Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine

BRYCE WALTON Suit of Armor: Size 36 * 151
From Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine

ROG PHILLIPS Good Sound Therapy * 172
From Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine

BORDEN DEAL The Secret Box * 181
From Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine

KENNETH C. MCCAFFREY The Resignation * 196
From Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine

DEFORBES A Mind Burns Slowly * 203
From Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine

THOMAS WALSH Dangerous Bluff  * 219
From The Saturday Evening Post

KENNETH MOORE The Safe Kill * 239
From Manhunt Magazine

STEWART PIERCE BROWN Just for Kicks * 246
From Bestseller Mystery Magazine

RICHARD M. GORDON Apres Moi, La Bombe * 259
From The Dude

JACK RITCHIE Shatter Proof * 265
From Manhunt Magazine

JAMES HOLDING A Question of Ethics * 273
From Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine

And, the Foreword:

FOLLOWING in the footsteps of David C. Cooke's 15-year tenure
as editor of this series presents a stimulating challenge. This, the
oldest annual collection of detective-mystery fiction, carries the
unmistakable imprint of Mr. Cooke's good taste and excellent
critical judgment, and I can only hope this volume will meet
the high standards he has set over the years.

My sole criterion in selecting these 20 stories is my own
personal judgment. I "like" every story I have chosen. Any
story that I could not read with enthusiasm and enjoyment from
the first page to the last was automatically discarded. I think it
is unrealistic and dishonest for an editor to claim he has used
any other yardstick in his selections.

My qualifications for the job are as follows: I have earned my
living writing mystery fiction for the past twenty-five years. I
have edited five similar collections in the past. For several years
I was co-author of a weekly review column specializing in mys-
teries. For five years I was head of a literary agency in New
York. I am currently owner and editor of a small publishing
house. And finally...I like to read mystery fiction.

I don't know what my own standards are for judging a story.
Above all else, I think, I demand that the writer have a story to
tell. Then, he must tell it well. Catching my interest with the
opening paragraph, and keeping me reading eagerly to the final
word. Each of these stories does exactly that.

Nine of these stories come from the pages of Alfred Hitch-
cock's Mystery Magazine. Four appeared in the Mike Shayne
Mystery Magazine, and three in Manhunt. The Saturday Evening Post,  
This Week Magazine, Dude and Bestseller Mystery Magazine are each
represented by one story.

Thus, only three out of twenty stories come from the "slick"
or mass-circulation magazines. There are two reasons for this.
First: With the disappearance of so many such magazines in the
past few years and the continual constriction of fiction in those
that remain, there is very little mystery fiction being printed in
the slicks today. Second: Much of what there is is not my kind
of story.

So far as I know, only two of the authors here are women. I
am sorry about this because these two stories are a couple of the
hardest-hitting and most memorable in the book. I would like to
have had more from the softer sex, but I simply could not find
them.

I think there are stories here that will appeal to every taste.
This is not because I have consciously catered to different tastes,
but because I, personally, enjoy every sort of fine mystery
writing whether it is done with gentle humor or with uncom-
promising realism.

I realize that aficionados are going to raise their eyebrows and
exclaim loudly at the non-appearance of any stories from Ellery
Queen's Mystery Magazine. The explanation is very simple.

Ellery Queen is now publishing two collections each year
from his own magazine. These two volumes pretty well take up
the bulk of the original fiction published by EQMM, and they
certainly call for the best that appeared in those pages.

My sincere thanks go not only to all the authors who contributed
stories, but also to all the other writers whose published
work over the past year has given me so much reading pleasure
. . .and has made my task of selecting the twenty "Best" such a
difficult one.

BRETT HALLIDAY

--So, this is one volume of the series (which would continue until 1985, latterly as The Year's Best Mystery and Suspense Stories), as I note in earlier posts, to not contain stories from EQMM , presumably more out of a snit on Frederic Dannay's part than anything else (he was not above capricious decision-making...which the editors of less-well-paying cf magazines often benefited from). It was the first of  only two volumes of the series edited by Dresser/Halliday, perhaps because of the embargo, or the desire to avoid any other charges of favorites-playing (one notes that Halliday nowhere acknowledges that he could be seen as having a bias in favor of publicizing Mike Shayne MM as at least a source of small money for him...certainly, Gardner Dozois for years heard grumbles about his more recent sf annual coming out concurrently with the issues of Asimov's Science Fiction he edited). Dresser/Halliday was succeeded by Anthony Boucher, Allen J. Hubin, and Edward Hoch (Hoch got some minor flack for including his own stories in his volumes of the annual).

And, despite the absence of EQMM fiction, it's still a decent book, and probably rather representative of its year. It helped that Manhunt, while not nearly the potent force it had been in the early/mid 1950s upon its beginnings, was still a source of decent fiction, as was Bestseller Mystery, like Mercury Mystery formerly a stablemate of EQMM and moving toward their last issues as continuing stablemates of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (the strength of both was in the novellas and short novels they still featured, as the continuation of the early paperback-in-digest-form series they had been in the '40s and '50s).

The Dude was a Playboy imitator, This Week was a newspaper supplement of the sort most obviously succeeded today by Parade, and The Saturday Evening Post, having been a nostalgia quarterly for some decades, is now trying to reinvent itself.

Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg (and company!) annuals:
The Year's 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories, First Annual Edition (Carroll & Graf, 1992)
...till...
The Year's 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories, Seventh Annual Edition (C&G, 1998) 
The World's Finest Mystery and Crime Stories: First Annual Collection (St. Martins/Tor/Forge 2000) 
...till...
The World's Finest Mystery and Crime Stories: Fifth Annual Collection (Forge 2004) 
The Adventure of the Missing Detective: And 19 of the Year's Finest Crime and Mystery Stories (Carroll & Graf 2005) 
The Deadly Bride and 21 of the Year's Finest Crime and Mystery Stories (C&G 2006) 
The Widow of Slane: And Six More of the Best Crime and Mystery Novellas of the Year! (C&G 2006--first of two annual supplementary volumes) 
Wolf Woman Bay: And 9 More of the Finest Crime and Mystery Novellas of the Year! (C&G 2007) 
A Prisoner of Memory: And 24 of the Year's Finest Crime and Mystery Stories (Pegasus 2008) 
Between the Dark and the Daylight: And 27 More of the Best Crime and Mystery Stories of the Year (Tyrus 2009) 
By Hook or By Crook And 27 More of the Best Crime & Mystery Stories of the Year (Tyrus 2011)