Jerome Charyn, ed. The New Mystery (1993)

     Jerome Charyn, ed. The New Mystery (1993) Sponsored by the The International Association of Crime Writers, this collection purports to showcase developments in crime writing. The subtitle refers to "essential crime writings", which is a wee bit of an exaggeration. What the book in fact showcases is gore-porn. Most of the stories describe gory and mean-spirited crimes with no mystery whatsoever about them, except perhaps the mystery of what kind of person wants to read this stuff. I don’t. In the 20 years since this collection was published a handful of the writers represented here have become reliable best sellers. The rest have sunk back into the obscurity from which this collection tried to extract them.