Doug Allyn: The Best American Mystery Stories 1997

Jeffery Deaver, former journalist, folksinger, and attorney, has written thirteen suspense novels. He has twice been nominated for Edgar Awards and is the recipient of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine’s Best Short Story of the Year for 1995. His recent A Maiden’s Grave was an HBO film and his The Bone Collector is soon to be released by Universal Pictures. The London Times has called him “the best psychological thriller writer around.”

• While my novels certainly have their dark side (a carping reviewer once wrote that the largest part of the film budget for a recent book of mine ought to go for fake blood), I nonetheless try to make sure that good prevails, that violence is unseen, and that readers arrive at the last page harrowed but happy, content in their knowledge that most of their favorite characters have survived the journey with them, principles and body parts intact.

With short stories, however, all those rules go out the window. For a reason I have yet to figure out, when I write stories, I feel a refreshing license to be as dark as I can be and dance gleefully back and forth over that fishy boundary between good and evil.

“The Weekender” is typical of my short fiction: A violent incident, a gothic setting, people pushed to extremes, psychological mind games, and a sense that nothing is quite what it seems to be. My influences are, not surprisingly. O. Henry, Poe, and The Twilight Zone.

Brendan DuBoisgrew up in New Hampshire and received a B.A. in English from the University of New Hampshire. A former newspaper reporter, he has been writing mystery fiction for more than a decade and still lives in his native state with his wife. Mona. He has published two novels — Dead Sand and Black Tide — and has recently completed a third. In 1995 he received the Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America for best mystery short story of the year, and he has three times been nominated for an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his short fiction.

• I’ve always been fascinated with the tale of the outsider intruding upon a closed community, and this is true in my story “The Dark Snow.” The community in this case is a lakefront town in rural New Hampshire, with its own rules, mores, and ways of getting along. The people in this town are not necessarily bad or evil; they just have a certain way of doing things, and outsiders who come in and do things differently often come under uncomfortable scrutiny or, in the case of my story, outright hostilitv.

The main character in this story is an outsider in the truest sense — not only is he a stranger to the people of this small New Hampshire town but, after years of service in some of the dark corners of our government, he’s also a stranger to the world of civilians. He does his best to adjust, he does his best to make friends with his community, and he does his best to try to ignore some old whispers that tell him what to do in the face of the hostility that’s tossed his way. But doing your best doesn’t always work.

With characters and a theme in place, the setting of the story was next. My parents once owned a cottage on a lake in New Hampshire, and my wife and I still vacation each year to a hideaway home on another lake, farther north. We have both come to love the times we spend at the lake, swimming, sailing, and stargazing at night. And a moonlight paddle in a canoe on water as still as glass, with the hooting sound of loons in the distance, is enough to raise the hair on the back of your neck. Lakewater can be comforting and soothing. It’s often beautiful.

But as I proved in this story, it can also be deadly.

Elizabeth Georgepublished her first novel. A Great Deliverance, in 1988. It was recognized with an Edgar nomination, and it received an Anthony Award, an Agatha Award, and France’s Grand Prix de Litérature Policière . She’s been awarded the MIMI, Germany’s award for international mystery fiction, and she’s been nominated twice for Svenska Deckarakademin, by Sweden’s Crime Writers Association. She’s an instructor in creative writing, offering courses in universities, colleges, and with private students throughout the country. She divides her time between Huntington Beach, California, and London.

• I know exactly the moment when I conceived “The Surprise of His Life.” It was the same moment in the summer of 1994 when I put together how O. J. Simpson had murdered his wife and Ronald Goldman. My story, however, isn’t an attempt to explain the Simpson murder in any way. Far be it from me to quest ion the conclusion of a jury sitting in a criminal trial. On the contrary, the Simpson murders acted as a foundation for a set of ideas about the nature of obsession and where it can lead.

Since all of my novels are set in England, this short story was a departure for me. It’s set in Newport Beach, California, and instead of my Scotland Yard detectives, it features a crusty private eye and a fifty-five-year-old man with prostate problems. Quite a departure, indeed.

It was a new experience, writing about my own back yard. I hope the effort proves enjoyable for the reader.

Jeremiah Healy,a graduate of Rutgers College and Harvard Law School, was a professor at the New England School of Law for eighteen years. He is the creator of John Francis Cuddy, a Boston-based private investigator who has appeared in eleven novels and thirty short stories. Healy’s first novel, Blunt Darts, was selected by the New York Times as one of the seven best mysteries of 1984.

• The idea and title for “Eyes That Never Meet” came to me in an unusual way. I’d been asked by James Grady to contribute a piece to the anthology Unusual Suspects, benefiting Share Our Strength, a Washington. D.C., organization that fights hunger in America. On a trip to New York City, I happened to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art during an exhibition of stelae, gravestones from ancient Greece in which the eyes of the departed and surviving spouses never meet, a symbol for the dead spouse no longer being able to see. It occurred to me, as it does to the fictional Marla Van Dorn in my story, that we who are fortunate seldom make eye contact with the homeless and hungry who beg on our sidewalks. Given the final twist in Eyes That Never Meet, I thought the title was particularly apt.

Melodie Johnson Howelives near Santa Barbara. She is the author of two mystery novels. The Mother Shadow and Beauty Dies. Another Diana Poole short story, “Dirty Blonde,” can be found in the anthology Sisters in Crime, fourth edition.

• Diana Poole was created out of my admiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Pat Hobby Stories. His wry observations on Hollywood and his character’s often funny and somehow sad attempts at regaining his past success are wonderful. I wanted to try to do something similar, but in the genre I write in and love — the mystery. So I created an out-of-work, middle-aged actress.

Being an ex-actress I have an intimate knowledge of the entertainment business. Hollywood reminds me of that old expression about New York: It’s a great place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there. Hollywood is a great place to write about but I wouldn’t want to work there.

The idea or need to write this particular short story came about when my husband and I were invited to attend a party for a rock-and-roll star. As it turned out, the star arrived after everyone had left. Some entrances, even in Hollywood, can be delayed too long. On our way home from the party I turned to my husband and in a theatrical, world-weary voice said, “Well, another tented evening.” I knew in that moment I had a story to tell. I also knew it wouldn’t be about a rock-and-roll star.