The New Mystery: The International Association of Crime Writers Essential Crime Writing of the Late 20th Century
by By Charyn, Jerome (EDT)
Category: Fiction , Mystery & Detective , General

In the last decade of this century, crime writing has become a true international language, bringing forth the world's best literary talents to create a fictional mirror of our fears, our need for justice - or revenge - and our violent world. Since 1987, the members of the International Association of Crime Writers have created a multinational "brotherhood and sisterhood of crime" to articulate a vision that the forty-two chilling stories in this definitive collection represent - fiction that pushes the genre of crime writing beyond its old limits to create a genuine literature for the modern age.James Ellroy, Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Andrew Vachss, and Didier Daeninckx, creators of stories that surpass the mere hard edge to depict a bloody, pitiless world of criminals and avengers, show us a violent urban no-man's land where the real danger is the loss of our souls.Sue Grafton uses her PI Kinsey Millhone to balance the scales of justice in the shotgun killing of a cocaine dealer when the authorities can't, or won't; Sara Paretsky brings back Philip Marlowe to solve a classic California case of double murder in a brilliant homage to Raymond Chandler.Clarice Lispector shows us the terrible tricks of a young English teacher protecting herself from rapists on a train ride to Rio; Don DeLillo slices close to the bone when he presents a sympathetic picture of a young Lee Harvey Oswald, and so does Lawrence Block when he uses the victims of AIDS to pose a conundrum about the ethics of dying... and murder. All forty-two stories in this extraordinary gathering of the "new mystery" represent crime writing that no longer follows the rules of yesterday's cozies and detective fiction. There is evil here, but no sanitized murders off stage or in locked rooms. There is disturbingly realistic violence, but no aloof, emotionless paragons of deduction. Instead, The New Mystery gives us vigorous, stunning tales, often ironic or deeply cynical and undeniably alive. By bringing us many original or previously uncollected stories by today's best crime writers, this volume is a milestone in mystery fiction - and riveting entertainment for every fan of the genre.