Twenty mystery stories – that will hold me for a while

 kw: book reviews, story reviews, mystery stories, crime fiction, anthologies, collections

I read mystery stories from time to time. Not novels; I prefer the short form because the author has to make a point and be done with it. Seeing that The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2024, edited by Anthony Horowitz, was available, I checked it out.

Twenty stories, and I have to say, all over the map. I like variety. With one exception I liked these stories. Here is my breakdown:

• ++ : 3
• +   : 9
• ~   : 7
• x   : 1 (skipped this one)

Not all of these are "murder mysteries", only about half. To me, that is a relief. "True crime", in all its variety, is more to my taste. Herewith, the three I liked the best:

"Beat the Clock" by Michael Bracken. The solution to a murder hinges on the vagaries of what clocks do—or must have done for them—when Daylight Time starts or ends. Motive? A big inheritance, that all expect will go three ways.

"How to Teach Yourself to Swim" by Fleur Bradley. The narrator can't do much to help an abused boy, but the boy rescues himself from a drug-dealing family by learning to swim.

"A Family Matter" by Leonardo Padura. Here I must digress. This is about someone wishing to escape from Castro's Cuba. A dear friend of mine swam overnight from a city near Guantanamo Base to a little offshore island, laid doggo in the water while the sun was up, then swam to the Base and obtained asylum in the US. This was more than 50 years ago. He still lives, now in California. In the story, the escapee is being helped from an unexpected direction, and the narrator, a retired cop, relies on the importance of family in Cuban society to find him, and then the twist occurs and I must leave it to you to see that for yourself.

A few of the notes I wrote after reading the stories:

Hidden heroism.
One too many snap decisions.
"Never not a cop" can be good.
Outliving the forensics.
Single mom gets away with killing (not her ex).

The last story, called a Bonus by the editor, is "The Suicide of Kiaros" by L. Frank Baum, the author of the Wizard of Oz series. The editor called it "the darkest story in the book," so I skimmed it without missing much. It's another gotaway story. It is not the story I skipped entirely; that one I could see right away hinged on deadly danger to a family, and I can't stomach those.

Great writing, from end to end. Now, back to science and scifi.