The Mysterious Press Anniversary Anthology : Celebrating 25 Years

Penzler Pick, June 2001: A quarter of a century ago (and doesn't that make me feel young!), I started a small publishing house devoted to high-quality mystery fiction. When it became a partnership with Warner Books, who subsequently bought it from me outright, it became a fairly good-sized house that published many of the greatest mystery writers of the second half of the 20th century. This excellent anthology features original stories commissioned especially for this celebratory volume by many of these authors, and as you might expect, there are some outstanding stories indeed.

Ed McBain's "Activity in the Flood Plain" tells the story of an artist and the Puerto Rican girl he painted until a delicatessen owner took her away to live in Israel, and then the lovely Connecticut woman who falls for him but battles his desire for a new studio to be built onto his house--with shocking results.

Joe Gores tells of the dilemma of the Chinese grocer who must run a gambling game to pay off a debt but is warned by a Mafia hit man that he must stop the game or die, and the members of Dan Kearny Associates who devise a plan to save his life. James Crumley's poignant tale is about a former whore who buys a second-hand wedding gown, "never used," and waits for the man who has promised to marry her--"after the next job." Donald E. Westlake's story of a reporter, a mad woman, and a young beauty apparently returned from the dead is even funnier and weirder than usual. Lindsey Davis provides a contemporary tale of detection, eschewing her usual ancient Rome for this collection.

Peter Lovesey is in the collection, and so are Loren D. Estleman, Marcia Muller, Jerome Charyn (with a fine Isaac Sidel story), recent Edgar-winner Joe R. Lansdale, Stuart M. Kaminsky, Archer Mayor, Robert Greer, Margaret Maron, M.C. Beaton, Charlotte Carter, and Beth Saulnier.

It's a splendid lineup, and a fitting tribute to a publishing enterprise that has continued to flourish as part of Warner Books. --Otto Penzler