In The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century, best-selling author Tony Hillerman and mystery expert Otto Penzler present an unparalleled treasury of American suspense fiction that every fan will cherish. Offering the finest examples from all reaches of the genre, this collection charts the mystery's eminent history from the turn-of-the-century puzzles of Futrelle, to the seminal pulp fiction of Hammell and Chandler, to the mystery story's rise to legitimacy in the popular mind, a trend that has benefited masterly writers like Westlake, Hunter, and Grafton. Nowhere else can readers find a more thorough, more engaging, more essential distillation of American crime fiction.

Penzler, the Best American Mystery Stories series editor, and Hillerman winnowed this select group out of a thousand stories, drawing on sources as diverse as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Esquire, Collier's and The New Yorker. Giants of the genre abound -- Raymond Chandler, Stephen King, Dashiell Hammell, Lawrence Block, Ellery Queen, Sara Paretsky, and others -- but the editors also unearthed gems by luminaries rarely found in suspense anthologies: William Faulkner. John Steinbeck. Damon Runyon, Harlan Ellison, James Thurber, and Joyce Carol Oates. Mystery buffs and newcomers alike will delight in the thrilling stories and top-notch writing of a hundred years' worth of the finest suspense, crime, and mystery writing.

Contents:

• A Retrieved Reformation by O. Henry
• Paul’s Case by Willa Cather
• The Problem of Cell 13 by Jacques Futrelle
• Blind Man’s Buff by Frederick Irving Anderson
• Naboth’s Vineyard by Melville Davisson Post
• A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell
• The Gutting of Couffignal by Dashiell Hammett
• Haircut by Ring Lardner
• Blue Murder by Wilbur Daniel Steele
• The Perfect Crime by Ben Ray Redman
• The Baby in the Icebox by James M. Cain
• The Murder by John Steinbeck
• Sense of Humor by Damon Runyon
• Ransom by Pearl S. Buck
• Red Wind by Raymond Chandler
• The Catbird Seat by James Thurber
• Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich
• An Error in Chemistry by William Faulkner
• The Nine Mile Walk by Harry Kemelman
• The Adventure of the President’s Half Disme by Ellery Queen
• The Homesick Buick by John D. MacDonald
• Gone Girl by Ross Macdonald
• The Moment of Decision by Stanley Ellin
• First Offense by Evan Hunter
• The Couple Next Door by Margaret Millar
• The Day of the Execution by Henry Slesar
• The Terrapin by Patricia Highsmith
• The Possibility of Evil by Shirley Jackson
• The Comforts of Home by Flannery O’Connor
• Good Man, Bad Man by Jerome Weidman
• Goodbye, Pops by Joe Gores
• The Whimper of Whipped Dogs by Harlan Ellison
• The Wager by Robert L. Fish
• Do With Me What You Will by Joyce Carol Oates
• Quitters, Inc. by Stephen King
• The Absence of Emily by Jack Ritchie
• By the Dawn’s Early Light by Lawrence Block
• Iris by Stephen Greenleaf
• Three-Dot Po by Sara Paretsky
• The Parker Shotgun by Sue Grafton
• Too Many Crooks by Donald E. Westlake
• Hot Springs by James Crumley
• The Dark Snow by Brendan DuBois
• Red Clay by Michael Malone
• Poachers by Tom Franklin
• Running Out of Dog by Dennis Lehane