The Best American Mystery Stories 2002

Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to the twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected—and most popular—of its kind.

In his introduction to this year’s collection, James Ellroy explores the differences between the novel and the short story. Included here are experts at both forms. Featuring renowned novelists like Stuart Kaminsky, Michael Connelly, Joe Gores, and Robert B. Parker, as well as veterans of this series like Brendan DuBois, Michael Downs, Joyce Carol Oates, and Clark Howard, this edition will delight readers with its wide variety and peerless quality.

Contents
Foreword by Otto Penzler
Introduction by James Ellroy
It Is Raining in Bejucal by John Biguenet
Two-Bagger by Michael Connelly
The Fix by Thomas H. Cook
Summa Mathematica by Sean Doolittle
Man Kills Wife, Two Dogs by Michael Downs
A Family Game by Brendan DuBois
The Blue Mirror by David Edgerley Gates
Inscrutable by Joe Gores
The Championship of Nowhere by James Grady
The Cobalt Blues by Clark Howard
Sometimes Something Goes Wrong by Stuart M. Kaminsky
The Mule Rustlers by Joe R. Lansdale
Maniac Loose by Michael Malone
Counting by Fred Melton
You Don’t Know Me by Annette Meyers
The High School Sweetheart by Joyce Carol Oates
Harlem Nocturne by Robert B. Parker
Midnight Emissions by F.X. Toole
A Lepidopterist’s Tale by Daniel Waterman
The Copper Kings (HHC) by Scott Wolven