Gary Alexander - The Best American Mystery Stories 2010

Lyndsay Fayespent years working in musical theater (she is a soprano and a proud member of the Actors’ Equity Association) before her meatpacking district day job was razed by bulldozers and she seized the opportunity to finish her first novel: Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson. Her latest short story appears in the 2009 holiday issue of The Strand magazine. She is an avid lover of food culture, Sherlockiana, and historical fiction and lives in Manhattan with her husband (Gabriel) and cat (Grendel). Visitwww.lyndsayfaye.com for more information.

When I was asked to contribute a story for the anthology Sherlock Holmes in America, I was thrilled to say yes, and to volunteer to use my Bay Area birthplace as a setting. I was equally as confused regarding how to get both Holmes and Watson all the way across America from London. That’s a long trip, and I didn’t care to lose Watson’s narrative voice by recounting Holmes’s days in America alone. And then I recalled that during an unfinished play called Angels of Darkness, Conan Doyle made mention of a young Dr. Watson practicing medicine in San Francisco. That solved half my problem. The challenge of writing a case narrated by Watson that Holmes is able to solve from his armchair a la Poe’s Dupin was very daunting; no investigation could happen, of course, and none of the dangers were immediate. But Conan Doyle himself used the format of Holmes retelling an old case by the fireside at Baker Street in two tales, which bolstered my confidence, and I simply added two new twists: Watson is doing the storytelling on this occasion, and the case is solved in real time instead of being a relic of Holmes’s college days.

Gar Anthony Haywoodis the Shamus and Anthony Award-winning author of eleven crime novels, including six in the Aaron Gunner series, two in the Joe and Dottie Loudermilk series, and three stand-alone thrillers. Haywood’s first Gunner mystery, Fear of the Dark, won the Private Eye Writers of America’s Shamus Award for Best First Novel of 1989, and his first Aaron Gunner short story, “And Pray Nobody Sees You,” won both the PEWA’s Shamus Award and the World Mystery Convention’s Anthony Award for Best Short Story of 1995. Haywood has written for both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, has penned such television dramas as New York Undercover and The District, and twice has coauthored a “Movie of the Week” for ABC Television. His latest novel is the urban crime drama Cemetery Road.

I am a monster fan of the Showtime-era Los Angeles Lakers, and Earvin “Magic” Johnson remains my favorite player of all time. A superstar first in sports and now in business, I don’t think there’s a sinister bone in Magic’s body, but he grew up in East Lansing, Michigan, so it’s probably safe to say there’s more edge to the man than his disarming smile would otherwise indicate.

This story came out of my curiosity about just how much “edge” there might be. As so dramatically illustrated by the Tiger Woods scandal, at the time of this writing, we never really know the people we elevate to celebrity status. What we see of them is only what they choose to expose to the light. The men and women who reside beneath the skin — the real people behind the public facades they project — are a complete unknown. And, I would venture to guess, some of them are killers you wouldn’t want to cross.

Jon Landis the author of twenty-eight books, seventeen of which have been national best-sellers. RT Reviews magazine honored him in 2009 with a special achievement award for being a “Pioneer in Genre Fiction.” The Seven Sins was named one of the Top Five Thrillers of 2008 by Library Journal and was optioned for film by Moritz Borman ( Terminator: Salvation). Jon’s latest series, commencing with Strong Enough to Die in 2009 and followed by Strong Justice in 2010, features female Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong. Strong Enough to Die has been optioned as a film property by Hand Picked Films, with Carl Franklin (Devil in a Blue Dress, Out of Time, One False Move) attached to direct and Jon writing the screenplay himself.

Jon graduated from Brown University in 1979 Phi Beta Kappa and Magna cum Laude. He serves as vice president of marketing for the International Thriller Writers (ITW) and lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

“Killing Time” offered me an opportunity to write a story that harks back to the days of hardboiled noir. I’d always wanted to write from the viewpoint of a dark hero, and the fish-out-of-water concept of a professional killer hiding out in the guise of a middle school teacher grabbed hold of me from the start. The real fun of the story for me was watching Fallon come to embrace his role and the moral dilemma he faces when the school is taken hostage by terrorists. I got the idea from the real-life tragedy a few years ago in Chechnya. But that’s the great thing about writing fiction: you can reinvent reality with any ending you want.

Dennis Lehaneis the author of eight novels, including The Given Day; Mystic River; Gone, Baby, Gone; and Shutter Island. He is currently writing a screen adaptation of “Animal Rescue” for 20th Century Fox. He lives with his wife and daughter in Boston and west central Florida.

“Animal Rescue” originated, like a lot of my work, from a central obsession with loneliness. Every day we interact with people who go home to empty apartments and numbing isolation from which there is no reasonable expectation of escape. On any number of levels, this is heartbreaking, and I wanted to write about it. I started with Bob, and that led me to Nadia and even Cousin Marv — three people lost in their aloneness. And then along comes this dog...

Lynda Leidiger’sshort stories have appeared in magazines ranging from Playboy to Prairie Schooner. She is a recipient of an NEA grant and was the first woman to win the International Imitation Hemingway Award. She lives in Iowa.

I wrote “Tell Me” after my sister-in-law became a victim of a random shooting by two teenage boys in rural Wisconsin. The true story took a twist far more amazing and powerful than anything I could have invented. Although the shooting left her legally blind and permanently disabled, she not only has forgiven the boys — now men — but visits them in prison. Her new career is traveling to schools and correctional facilities around the country, talking in her soft, halting voice about the consequences of violence. She changes lives. Knowing her is a gift. I’d like to dedicate this story to Jackie Millar.

During a twenty-five-year career as a criminal defense attorney, Phillip Margolinappeared before the U.S. Supreme Court and represented approximately thirty people charged with homicide, including a dozen who faced the death penalty. All fourteen of his novels have appeared on the New York Times best-seller list. Heartstone, his first novel, was nominated for an Edgar. Executive Privilege won the Spotted Owl Award for the Best Mystery in the Pacific Northwest. The Last Innocent Man and Gone, But Not Forgotten have been made into movies.

Never throw away anything you write. You never know when it might come in handy. About a year ago, I was going through some very old files in a metal filing cabinet in my laundry room, when I came across a folder with scraps of short stories I had started and never finished. To give you an idea how old these stories were, the one that eventually became The House on Pine Terrace was written on a typewriter. I had forgotten about the story in the intervening years. The scrap I read was only a few pages long, but it sounded interesting. I took it down to my office and spent a few days expanding it into a whole story, and now it’s in this anthology. As soon as I finish writing this note, I’m going back to that ancient file. Who knows?