Майкл Коннелли - The Best American Mystery Stories 2008

• I wrote two short stories in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The first was titled “Jesus Out to Sea.” It dealt with events leading up to the storm and the catastrophe that occurred when the levees broke. Later, I began an account of the evacuees who had fled the Lower Ninth Ward and had ended up in places like my family’s hometown. New Iberia, two hours west of New Orleans. But as I worked on the second narrative, I believed that it should deal with more than the storm itself.

In one day, six soldiers from a local National Guard outfit were killed in Iraq. I had come to believe that the events in New Orleans and the events in Iraq were related, part of the same piece, involving the same players. The politicians who were not in New Orleans while their countrymen drowned were the same ones who had taken their country to war in the

Middle East. In my opinion, the victims of the breached levees were in many ways similar to the victims of the war. The protagonist in “Mist” is made a victim twice and finds herself carrying a burden that no human being should have to bear. I believe that Golgotha is an ongoing story, and I believe it is daily acted out somewhere in the world, whether in a desert or in neighborhoods that were largely Afro-American before they went under the waves.

In the story, New Orleans became a pewter chalice filled with dark water and the luminosity of broken Communion wafers that represent those who are broken and rejected by the world. I think that what occurred in New Orleans will remain the greatest shame and scandal in our history. And that’s what I tried to convey in “Mist.”

Michael Connellyis the author of nineteen novels, many featuring Detective Harry Bosch, and one collection of true crime stories. He is a past president of the Mystery Writers of America. He lives in Florida with his family.

• Like probably anybody in the game I am a big fan of the film Double Indemnity. I have watched it several times and always wanted to write a story that might have a bit of the same twist. Having lived in L.A. for fourteen years, I was also familiar with Mulholland Drive and its almost mythical lore in the city. I lived nearby it most of my years there and on many occasions came around a curve at night and encountered a coyote in my headlights. If L.A. is a place where anything can happen, then Mulholland Drive is certainly a road that it can happen on. I tried to take these interests and elements and put them into this story about an accident investigator.

Robert Ferrignoplayed poker professionally before an eight-year stint as a feature writer at the Orange County Register. Ten novels later, he plays poker only to clear his head, usually at the Indian casino twenty-three minutes away. His writing has gotten better over the years, but his poker skills have atrophied. Most days it seems like a good tradeoff.

• “The Hour When the Ship Comes In” was one of those beautiful writing experiences where I just tapped into the character’s consciousness and let my fingers do the walking. It’s about a bad man who does an inexplicable good deed and pays the price for it, spending the arc of the story trying to understand why he would have done such a foolish thing. The story contains the distillation of all my moral thinking: it’s the little kindnesses that kill us, but what else can we do and still stay human?

Chuck Hogan’scrime novels include The Standoff; The Killing Moon; Prince of Thieves, which was awarded the Hammett Prize: and the forthcoming Sugar Bandits. “One Good One” was his first published short story.

• Like many writers, I have files crammed with newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and story ideas — stuff from all over. The oldest clipping is dated November 12, 1984, an article from the Boston Globe on the new phenomenon of serial killers, entitled: “They’re ‘Intelligent’ and ‘Pleasant’... and They Kill for the ‘Fun’ of It.” Entire paragraphs are underscored with red pen. I was seventeen years old. My parents were concerned.

These things pile up over the years, and I use them in my novels when I can. After I met Ed Hoch, the prolific short-story author, at an award luncheon in 2005, it occurred to me that the short format would be a great way to explore these scraps and notions which otherwise might not find their way to print. “One Good One” sprang from an index card (dated 10/13/05, 1:00 P.M. — yes, I time-code them) on which I scribbled this idea for a novel:

Drug user/dealer who tells his mother he’s a UC (lie). She mentions to wrong people — his cohorts. Also to cops looking for him. Both sides come after him. Cops play along w/ ruse to further pressure him. Real UC cop is revealed (Main’s dealer/ friend?); i.e., when heat comes, he thinks it’s b/c of him? Crazy Get Shorty — type tale.

I initially saw it bigger, bringing in the main character’s innocent family (UC being shorthand for “under cover”) and other interesting lowlifes, and putting everybody in great jeopardy — all this chaos springing from one indolent loser’s mendacity. It felt like the setup for an Elmore Leonard novel, which was what I liked about it. The short story included here, of course, has none of that promised craziness, none of the patented Leonard zing. It’s a different animal entirely. But what I like about it now, reading it one year later, is that each character has a simple and reasonable motivation for his or her action, and it is the overlapping progression of these actions that drives the story. Each section folds neatly into the next, until what you’re left with in the end is a little piece of origami in the shape of a coffin.

Ed Hoch passed away the day before I learned of this story’s selection for inclusion in this anthology, and I would be remiss in not tipping my cap, however humbly, from the author of one short story to the author of nearly one thousand.

Rupert Holmeshas twice won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, as well as several Tony and Drama Desk awards as a playwright, lyricist, and composer. In 2008 his Broadway mystery musical comedy Curtains celebrated its first anniversary on the Great White Way. He also created and wrote the television series Remember WENN. He is the author of the mystery novels Where the Truth Lies (made into a motion picture by Atom Egoyan), Swing, and the forthcoming The McMasters Guide to Homicide.

It’s difficult to say much about “The Monks of the Abbey Victoria” without spoiling its outcome for the reader. However, I can certainly disclose how much I enjoy re-creating other times in America, some of which I witnessed wide-eyed as a boy, others of which I try to reconstruct via immensely pleasurable research. With “Monks,” I drop in on the television industry circa 1960, in that “gray flannel Brooks Brothers three-martooni Executive Coloring Book THINK let’s run it up the flagpole” era of uneasy camaraderie and unbridled chauvinism. It’s a time whose time has gone, which is probably a very good thing, but you can visit it in total comfort and safety simply by turning a few pages of this volume. This story was also inspired by — if in no way patterned after — the Gamesmen, a group of extremely honorable and memorable fellows who’ve allowed me into their midst, and whose activities bear no resemblance to those practiced by the Monks of the Abbey Victoria.

Holly Goddard Joneswas a 2007 recipient of the Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award. Her fiction has appeared in the Kenyon Review, the Southern Review, the Gettysburg Review, the Hudson Review, and Epoch and has been reprinted in two volumes of New Stories from the South. A graduate of the M.F.A. program in creative writing at Ohio State University, she now teaches at Murray Slate University, in her home state of Kentucky.