The World's Finest Mystery and Crime Stories: 3: Third Annual Collection

These really are the world's finest mystery and crime stories! I have collections 1-5 and these are the best collections of short mystery fiction I've come across. Filled with stories by some of the best writers in the business you can't go wrong with these anthologies.

As usual the G and G (great goldies) team has put together a powerful anthology consisting of thirty-nine tales from 2001 that run the mystery-crime-thriller spectrum. Obviously all the inclusions have seen print elsewhere, but not under one tome before this compilation. The contributions for the most part are excellent depending on the reader's taste, but none are terrible regardless of palate. In addition three articles report on the general state of the genre during 2001 and four country specific reports (Great Britain, Australia, Canada, and Germany) furnish insight into the trends. THE WORLD'S FINEST MYSTERY AND CRIME STORIES, THIRD ANNUAL COLLECTION, VOL. 3 provides the audience with a delightful slice of some of the year's better short stories.Harriet Klausner

I have recurring dreams where I'm on a rock or a raft or some sort of lifesaver in the middle of raging rapids and objects are floating by me. For some reason I feel duty bound in my dreams to grab each of the objects, like I'm a character in a video game or something. I think I'm grabbing everything, but it gradually hits me that I'm not. I usually wake up at the point where I've grabbed and missed for something I really, really need. My dream, of course, is a metaphor for books or authors I miss during the year. It's impossible to keep up with everything that's going on in the world of literature. Even if you want to limit yourself to a particular genre, something good is going to get by you. Time is a problem, distribution is another and some time word of mouth doesn't reach its intended target. That's why those "Year's Best" anthologies are required reading, particularly in the mystery genre. There's no way to keep up with everything and, even if the market for short stories is shrinking, there are enough of them --- and they are hard enough to find --- to make it virtually impossible to keep up with all of them. A particular favorite mystery favorite of mine is THE WORLD'S FINEST MYSTERY AND CRIME STORIES. It's only up to its third annual edition, but is already staking out a claim in the genre as being indispensable. Editorial chores are handled by Ed Gorman and Martin Greenberg, both of whom are legends in the anthology arena. Between the two of them they burrow into every cranny of the genre and come away with treasures.THE WORLD'S FINEST is not merely a collection of short mystery and crime fiction, though it would be worth the price of admission on that basis alone. There are a number of essays included, dealing with The Year 2001 in Mystery and Crime fiction, a Yearbook, the state of the art in Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Germany and Fandom. There's also a list of the ten best novels that is quite interesting, both for what is included (TOTAL RECALL by Sarah Petretsky) and what is not (what happened to THE JUDGEMENT by D.W. Buffa?). The list of course is, at least to some extent, subjective and part of the fun of it is finding one (or two or three) books you missed. And, when you're done having fun with all of that, there are the stories.One of the joys of this anthology is finding names you know and love, while finding others you've never heard of. In the former category, there is Ed McBain with "Activity on the Flood Plain" which, on the surface, doesn't appear to belong in this collection at all. What begins as a story of a beleaguered artist dealing with a nattering nabob on a planning and zoning board takes a left turn near the conclusion. And, yeah, it definitely belongs in this volume. Jeffrey Deaver is included as well, with "Beautiful." This marks the first time I have ever been able to guess the conclusion of a Deaver work and it did not diminish my enjoyment of the story, which concerns a woman who finds an effective,