Gary Alexander - The Best American Mystery Stories 2010

The reason that I was able to let the story take its own course, guided by the strangeness of that confident voice, is that I wrote it on a deadline. At the time, I was part of an unofficial writing workshop with some friends from the University of Virginia. It had been several years since I’d been part of an official writing community, so I was, and am, hugely grateful for the discipline and camaraderie that the group provided. I’d like to thank those friends here, excellent writers all: Will Boast, Erin Brown, Drew Johnson, and Emma Rathbone. Thanks also to Ronald Spatz for publishing the story in Alaska Quarterly Review.

Matt Bellis the author of the fiction collection How They Were Found, published in October 2010 by Keyhole Press. He is also the editor of the literary magazine The Collagist and can be found online atwww.mdbell.com.

In “Dredge,” I wanted to write a failed detective story, one in which the person acting as the detective could not carry out the duties of his assumed position: Punter is incapable of solving the “crime” he sets out to solve, mostly due to his mental and social limitations. He tries to act as he believes a detective should act, but because he fails to completely process what he experiences, he isn’t able to draw the appropriate connections between the few clues he manages to uncover. Partly, this is because he has been isolated for so long. He has no family, no friends, and everyone else in his life — his counselors, his coworkers — have all been removed from his life by the time the story begins. What happened to the drowned girl in this story is something that Punter can only understand if he understands the people around him, and since that’s impossible, the story becomes about what he chooses to do in the absence of that understanding. I’ve always thought about what happens at the very end of “Dredge” as a positive thing for Punter, as dark as it seemingly is. For me, it’s a hopeful ending, even though an outside observer would think that much about his life is now going to be worse than it was before (and even though he’s inflicted misery upon others to get there). When looking at the story purely from Punter’s perspective, his getting to release his awful history has got to be a triumph, no matter what it eventually costs him. That kind of “hard win” interests me a lot — what if the best we can hope for from our efforts is still a bad outcome? We still have to try, right?

Jay Brandonis the author of fifteen novels, from Deadbolt (1985), which won Booklist’s Editor’s Choice Award, to Milagro Lane (2009). Five of his novels feature district attorney Chris Sinclair and child psychiatrist Anne Greenwald, the most recent being Running with the Dead (“a brilliant entry in a series that just keeps getting better” — Kirkus). His novel Fade the Heat was nominated for an Edgar Award and has been published in more than a dozen foreign countries. Jay holds a master’s degree in writing from Johns Hopkins and is a practicing lawyer in San Antonio.

My only nonfiction book is a history of practicing law in San Antonio. While doing research for that book, I came across this incident from 1842, when a Mexican general and his troops marched into San Antonio (Texas was not at war with Mexico at the time), went straight to the courthouse, and captured nearly every lawyer in town. What a time it must have been when an enemy thought he could strike a crippling blow by taking away the lawyers. The lawyers were all eventually released, but some were gone for nearly two years. I was fascinated both by the idea of a city without lawyers and by what their captivity must have done to those prisoners. Other than that historical event, the story is entirely fiction.

I want to mention two other things: “A Jury of His Peers” is written in a slightly archaic style to fit the time period. And yes, this attack on our own soil that San Antonians remembered for the rest of their lives did happen on September 11. You couldn’t make that up. Real life is shameless.

Phyllis Cohenwas a resident of Manhattan. After retiring from a thirty-five-year career in the New York City school system, she undertook a mini second career as a freelance writer, writing nonfiction at first, mostly science reporting; when that petered out, she moved on to fiction. About her fiction, she said: “My short stories are of many genres — crime, science fiction, relationships — but there is a common element throughout of character and human interest.” Phyllis Cohen died on January 26, 2009. (Note: This brief bio and the note that follows were written by the author’s widower, Herbert Cohen.)

When Phyllis first heard of the call for stories for the Mystery Writers of America anthology, she pulled “Designer Justice” out of the trunk and swore this would be her last attempt to get a story published before absolutely quitting. She’d sold only one story, some twenty years earlier, to Buffalo Spree. Whenever she submitted stories, they were returned with the usual rejection wallpaper. Many times she’d get an editor’s letter praising her style but requesting that she remove some pointed political opinion or rewrite a section. Ripping the letter up, she’d sneer, “I don’t do surgery on my babies!”

“Designer Justice” presented a different problem, however: it was more than 1,500 words over the MWA anthology word allowance. It took over a month to bring the story down to size. She called the editing her “literary liposuction.” When she was finally finished, she lifted the story out of the printer tray and thrust it at me: “Read the crap!” Then she stared out the window trying to look nonchalant, but once or twice I caught a furtively anxious glance. Ten minutes later I looked up at her. “Kiddo! This stuff you think is crap is ten times better than the original.” She didn’t believe me until she received the acceptance letter.

In May 2008, Phyllis was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The first words out of her mouth were, “Shit, I knew I’d never see that damn story in print!” Unfortunately, she never did. I received the preproduction copy on January 27, the day after Phyllis died.

John Dufresneis the author of two story collections, two books on writing fiction, and four novels, most recently, Requiem, Mass. His story “The Timing of Unfelt Smiles” appeared in The Best American Mystery Stories 2007. He teaches creative writing at Florida International University in Miami.

My job was to write a story set in South Boston. I grew up in an Irish neighborhood, attended Irish Catholic schools for twelve years, and was an altar boy in an Irish parish church much like St. Cormac’s in the story. I wanted to be a priest. I wanted to write about sin and evil in the context of a sacred place. The epidemic of priestly abuse of children seemed like a natural place to begin. When I started the story, I didn’t know if the sin was abuse or if the sin was false accusation. Or both. I remembered the McMartin preschool abuse trials and was aware of false memory syndrome. So I began writing the story during the first week of the fall semester. I wrote five or six pages that week and stopped when I got to a point in Father Mulcahy’s dream where Jesus won’t stop tickling him. I wasn’t expecting that to happen. I brought the pages to school and read them to my undergrad class. I told the students I’d appreciate any feedback, any thoughts. They began to e-mail questions and suggestions. Every couple of weeks I’d read some more. When I found myself unexpectedly in Mrs. Walsh’s head in the opening act, I knew I could now go into anyone’s head that I wanted. Maybe even Jesus’s. When a representative from the cardinal’s office stopped by the rectory, I knew there would be plenty of sin — and crime — to go around. I promised the students that I’d finish the story by the end of the semester. I e-mailed them copies with their grades.