The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2022 Edited by Jess Walter (Bibliolifestyle Book Tour)

 

Thank you, Partner @bibliolifestyle @marinerbooks @williammorrowbooks for a review copy of The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2022.

What genre do you turn to when life gets stressful?  It varies for me, but lately it has been mystery, suspense, and/or romance.  I made an impromptu trip back to Michigan to see my Grandma who isn’t feeling well this past weekend and I’ve gotten behind on posts.  Please forgive me as I catch up!  I loved this explanation in the Foreword to this collection, “Whatever the mechanism, and whether or not we ask, fiction helps us make sense of life, the universe, everything.”

The Best American Mystery and Suspense is a fantastic collection of the top twenty mystery and suspense stories published in 2021.  I was intrigued by the Foreword by Steph Cha where she explained her process of combing through various publications and anthologies published in 2021 and selecting the top fifty stories.  These stories were then forwarded on to Jess Walter, the author of Beautiful Ruins.  I enjoyed Beautiful Ruins, but now realize I need to find Walter’s works of suspense and mystery.  Walter’s Introduction explained his process of further narrowing down the stories to the top twenty stories in a humorous way.  I loved his introduction and in fact think it’s one of the most entertaining introductions that I’ve ever read.  The foreword and introduction were a great set-up for the stories themselves. 

The collection included a lot of unique and intriguing stories.  I have to admit though that my favorite story was “Long Live the Girl Detective” by Megan Pillow.  The Girl Detective is not named, but it is Nancy Drew.  She is referred to as “The Girl Detective Who Is Dead but Not” as she investigates her own murder and decides to take back the narrative of her own story in the modern day.  Bess and George even make an appearance.  I’ve loved Nancy Drew since I was a child and this story surprised and delighted me.  I did enjoy so many of the other stories and they definitely have kept me thinking about them.  It’s also introduced me to a lot of new to me authors that I will definitely need to keep my eye out for.  I enjoy short stories.

This book was published on November 1, 2022 and is now available.

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

In 1962, Pasquale is trying to promote and improve his family’s hotel in a remote coastal Italian community. He is surprised when a young American movie actress, Dee Moray, shows up looking for a room. He is further surprised to discover she is dying of cancer. The book flips between many different viewpoints of the story through the years. In present day, Shane Wheeler is trying to sell his movie idea to Claire Silver, the legendary producer Michael Deane’s assistant, when he finds himself an impromptu translator for an aged Pasquale who has turned up looking for Dee Moray. Together they all unravel the love story of Dee, which touched many lives including film legends Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

I love 1960’s film so having the novel set during that time and involving the production of Cleopatra was wonderful. The novel also touched the horrors of WWII with novelist Alvis Bender. He wrote one perfect chapter of a novel while staying at Pasquale’s hotel, but was never able to finish it. I loved the threads of all of the tales and how they eventually wound up together in one perfect story. I still find myself thinking about this novel, it was a great read.

Beautiful Ruins was the September FLICKS Book and Movie club pick (I’m behind on my reviews!). I sadly had to miss that meeting due to work; I really would have liked to discuss the novel!

Being a Wisconsinite, these quotes were some of my favorites in the novel. It is a young woman, Maria, talking to Alvis while he is in Italy during WWII.

“I can take you to Wisconsin. You can get fat there.”

“Ah, Wisconsin,” she said, “The cheese and the dairy fields.” She waved her hand in front of her face as if Wisconsin lay just beyond the shrub trees alongside the road. “Cows, farms, and Madison, moon over the river, and the college of the Badgers. It is cold in the winter but in the summer there are beautiful farm girls with pigtails and red cheeks.”

Book Source: The Kewaunee Public Library