The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021 is a well curated annual collection of new short mystery & suspense fiction edited by Alafair Burke & Steph Cha. Released 12th Oct 2021 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on their Mariner imprint, it's 320 pages and is available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats.
There are 20 stories by my count and they're from authors both familiar and new to me. The stories are varied, there were (as always) some which didn't grab me personally, but all were well written and competently plotted. They were mostly in the 4 star range(ish) with a a fair smattering of really standout stories. This is a well done anthology of stories in the 3-5 star range.
One reason I like collections
and anthologies is that short fiction is really challenging. It's spare
and the author doesn't have a wealth of wordage to develop characters
or the plotting. Well written short fiction is a delight. I also love
collections because if one story doesn't really grab me, there's another
story just a few pages away.
Four stars on average. It's a diverting read.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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