Saturday, May 26: Mystery Masterclass
Readers of the first “Mystery Masterclass” column may remember that Charles Ardai referred to “a recent article in the Wall Street Journal [that] spoke of a mystery short story renaissance.” The author of that article was Tom Nolan, the WSJ’s regular correspondent for mystery fiction and the editor of Strangers In Town: Three Newly Discovered Mysteries by Ross Macdonald (Crippen & Landru, 2001) (alas, now out of print) and author of the Edgar-nominated Ross Macdonald: A Biography.
There are few, if any, literary critics in the United States with a deeper or more profound knowledge of crime fiction. Criminal Brief is proud to present this exclusive report from him.
STATE OF THE ART
by Tom Nolan
It was an American who invented the mystery short-story; and for at least a hundred years, Americans loved reading and writing this sort of brief crime-tale. In recent decades, though, the detection short-story has been a lot harder to find in the U.S.
Edward D. Hoch, by far the most prolific American writer of brief detection-stories, says: “I’ve had more collections of my stories published in Japan than in the United States. New Japanese writers tend to go for this sort of fairly-clued whodunit-story more than up-and-coming American writers. And the French also do this quite a bit.â€
But while the crime short-story is nowhere nearly as much in evidence now in this country as it was forty or even fifteen years ago, it still endures; and in fact, it may be making something of a comeback, through original-story anthologies such as those edited by the knowledgeable and enthusiastic Otto Penzler.
Nowadays, though, thinks Mr. Penzler, authors are writing such tales as much for love of craft as for money: “Even [with] the best-paying anthologies – and I’ve paid more than anybody, I think, in the history of the genre, for short-stories – it’s a trivial amount, compared to what a novel can engender … I think that a lot of writers have ideas that don’t fit into a full-length novel: you know, they’re single-twist; or just a nice nugget of a story, but not enough to fill out 300 pages. And so the short-story gives them the opportunity to use a good idea in a constructive way.â€
Otto Penzler has not only coaxed memorable short work from such celebrated contemporary crime-novelists as Elmore Leonard and Michael Connelly; he has come across less-well-known young writers who are proving to be contemporary masters of the short-story, he says: “People like Scott Wolven, who I think has been in ‘Best American Mystery Stories’ six years in a row. Christopher Coake, who wrote a long short-story, ‘All Through the House’ – I’ll tell you, I’ve read an awful lot; it’s really hard to surprise me, but – about halfway through this story, I literally had to catch my breath, what I had just read was such a shock to me. To be able to do that, after all these years and all the stories that I’ve read – it’s really an amazing thing.
“Both of those guys, their first hard-cover book was a short-story collection, not a novel.â€
While such books of short-stories don’t do as well in the marketplace as do novels, they do well enough for publishers to keep publishing them. “You know, they’re not philanthropists,†says Mr. Penzler (who is also a bookseller). “They keep putting them out because they sell.â€
And readers buy and read them because they fill a continuing need for brief, entertaining fiction. “I think it’s fairly obvious,†Mr. Penzler says, “that there are times – being a guest at somebody’s house, being on a short train- or bus-ride – when the idea of being able to conclude the reading experience without letting it [carry over] to another time where you just might lose focus on what it is that you’re reading,†is ideal.
“I think perhaps people like short-stories maybe to read before bedtime,†guesses Ed Hoch, who lists Lawrence Block, Ruth Rendell, and Joyce Carol Oates as among current practitioners he especially admires. Of recent past-masters, he says: “Roald Dahl … his early, adult short-stories were very good. Certainly Ed McBain – he’s one who was successful at the novel but continued to write short-stories through his whole career.â€
For Laura Lippman, a current best-selling novelist who’s also been known to write as many as six short-stories in a single year, the many original-anthology volumes being done by such publishers as Akashic are a great place to discover not only “terrific new voices†but also to find out “new things about writers that you thought you knew.†As a for-instance of the latter, she cites author Bill Crider: “He’s been on the scene for a long time; and … I think people would say, ‘Oh, Bill Crider, he’s this nice man from Texas, and he writes these very – nice books’; but if you read Bill’s story – I think it’s ‘Crank,’ in Damn Near Dead [Busted Flush Press, 2006] – you’d be surprised!â€
Whether they’re having their preconceived notions shaken or making brand-new discoveries, Laura Lippman thinks readers (herself included) are now using mystery and crime short-stories in part as introductions to authors they might then like to read longer works by: “It’s a way to sample the writer’s style and voice, and get a feel for whether this is someone you want to spend more time with … Certainly that’s the way I’ve used short-stories … You know, it’s sort of like a low-key first-date: ‘I’ll meet them for lunch.’â€
Are not the Dell mystery magazines and the other “pulps” also part of the “state of the art”? Why limit the discussion to hard-cover publications? Is Mr. Nolan implying that the very best short crime fiction appears only in book form?
Don’t blame Tom for the title–he sent the piece to me without one and I used my editorial discretion to add one, which perhaps I should have chosen more carefully.
Tom Nolan is a book reviewer, so naturally his professional view is going to be concentrated on anthologies rather than on magazines.
Mr. Nolan:
Can I suggest you also look at some of the hardboiled/noir web-zines out there such as Hardluck Stories and Thuglit, which are publishing darker and more edgier crime fiction that what’s typically being published elsewhere, by both newer writers and professionals like Ken Bruen, Ed Gorman, Bill Crider, Adrian McKinty, etc., and whose stories are making it into Best of Anthologies.
Dave Zeltserman
crimne writer, as well as publisher of Hardluck Stories
http://www.hardluckstories.com
More edgier?
For what it’s worth, here are some Edgar Award statistics for the short story based on data at MWA’s website.
(1) 1984-2007, Robert L. Fish Memorial Award for best first short story: 83% were stories from what are now Dell magazines, 17% were stories from anthologies.
(2) 1951-2007, best short story [other than (1) above]: 39% were stories from what are now Dell magazines, 35% were stories from other magazines, and 26% were stories from anthologies.
Clearly, short stories from magazines (NOT stories from anthologies) have garnered a lion’s share of the MWA awards.
Let’s say edgier, as in out there on the edge, pushing the envelope, taking more chances, and while these stories tend to be rawer and more extreme in their violence, they also tend to be purer in their noir aspects than what’s being published elsewhere, at least from what I can tell. My opinion today web-zines are the new pulps. Btw. My point was not in anyway to knock Dell Magazines (which I’m occassionally published in) or anyone else, but to point Mr. Nolan to what I consider a very exciting new wave of crime fiction that is typically overlooked.
Dave: I was only teasing you about using two amplifiers, a grammatical no-no. But to make up for being a such a snotty and sassy old phart, I’ve added Hardluck Stories to the links box, where it should have been from the start.
My original point stands, however: Tom is a book critic, not a magazine critic or a web critic. His audience comprises people who buy books. I was very pleased when he agreed to write a column for us, but of course knew it would be slanted toward his own area of expertise. Tom did for us for free what the Wall Street Journal pays him to do, strictly out of love for the genre. If that’s not gentlemanly behavior, I don’t know what is.
As a professional critic, his list of stuff to be read naturally precludes anything but books–one of his colleagues, the Chicago Tribune’s Dick Adler, used to live upstairs from me. Dick would get between five and ten books every day.
I know you were not knocking Tom, and I’m delighted to see your presence here–and this is probably a good time to also acknowledge that the inimitable Bill Crider, whom both you and Tom made reference to, dropped by a couple of weeks ago and promised to put a word in about us in his EQMM column. Thanks, Bill!
>> Dave: I was only teasing you about using two amplifiers, a grammatical no-no.
Jim, I was well aware that’s what you were doing, but sometimes that happens when you write quickly and don’t bother to proofread, and I was guilty of that. It happens. Of course, I chose to ignore all that in my followup post 😉
Btw. Great job with this new blog!