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There are a number of attractive reasons for buying this collection of seventeen short stories. It makes a great Christmas present. It's a fun read in itself. It makes available in one volume seventeen chapbooks that are exceedingly rare and expensive as can be when one does show up on the market. It is a great introduction to the voice of some of the masters in the field. And the buyer can feel good by supporting an independent bookstore to stay in business. As Otto Penzler, the editor and the owner of The Mysterious Bookshop, explains in his introduction, "As a way of thanking our customers for their support, I have commissioned an original story from some of the finest mystery writers in America each Christmas season for the past 17 years. These stories are then published in handsome booklets and given to my customers as a Christmas present. The only criteria for the authors to follow were that the stories should be set during the Christmas season, involve a mystery, and have at least some of the action take place at The Mysterious Bookshop." In a sense then the title of George Baxt's contribution applies to the entire collection: "Schemes and Variations." The commonality of the setting — or more precisely the two settings: the first twelve stories are set in the original bookshop on Manhattan's 56th Street; the last five at its new location on Warren Street — provides an unanticipated pleasure. We get seventeen different views of what the bookshop and its proprietor mean to each author. The portrait that emerges of Otto Penzler is relatively complex, with not all the particulars in agreement. Because of the season, the white-haired owner, editor, and publisher, born in 1942, is often compared to Santa Claus. From the amassed evidence, one would gather that he is a bon vivant with a taste for good liquor and wine, good-looking blondes, rare books, and priceless manuscripts. Though possessing an autocratic manner, he also seems quite sensitive to others' feelings and has a weakness for the down-and-out. He solves one of the murders that takes place at his business. Since the stories were written by friends and his wife, there's the strong possibility that some of the descriptions contain ironical in-jokes. Because of the season also, as well as the nature of the commission, most of the stories are pretty light-hearted. After the crime is solved, many go on to wind up with an O. Henry kind of twist. Lost, stolen, and newly discovered manuscripts and rare first editions (Dashiell Hammett seems a particular favorite) furnish basic plots for several. For example, Rupert Holmes's "The Long Winter Nap" lets the sudden appearance of an early manuscript version of a Sherlock Holmes story provide the motive for murder. Atypical only in that Penzler solves the crime, the story ends with his revelation of a bit more about the nature of that manuscript for the final twist. The individual authors are generous in their tributes to their peers and immediate predecessors. Dropped names provide an education in itself for readers, offering insight into which fellow authors mystery writers themselves respect. A running joke among several stories, including one by Evan Hunter as Ed McBain, is the problem of keeping track of the various pseudonyms Hunter uses (without mention that "Evan Hunter" itself was not the author's birth name). Because of all these similarities among the stories, the collection is probably best spread over the twelve days of Christmas rather than devoured in one setting. The most moving of the stories, for me, is Thomas H. Cook's "The Lesson of the Season." Its moral is a variation on an old truism: don't judge a person by the books he reads. A clerk mentally sneers at a reader with no taste, one who comes in often to buy an "author of a decidedly lowbrow series of paperback originals." She is counting down the time until she can close up shop by reading a philosophical treatise called The Measure of Man. Hung up over a sentence from the book — "We live in the echo of our pain" — she begins thinking about her father's last hours and the very different kind of pain she felt then from what was expected of her. And so she is moved to ask the buyer why he reads this particular author's work. The customer's story about a crime he committed, one for which he can never be charged, deepens her empathy for her fellow humans. When she takes the subway home that night, she looks at the other passengers for the first time, "wondering what sorrows they had suffered, witnessed, caused, the varied ways they'd managed to endure the life that followed. In all of that, we were the same, she decided, bent on finding comfort in whatever way we can." It's a rich story in all sorts of ways. The seventeen authors are listed in alphabetical order on the dust jacket. The chronological order of the collection, 1993-2009, is as follows (with the series character, if used, listed in parentheses): Donald E. Westlake (John Dortmunder), George Baxt (Pharoah Love), Edward D. Hoch (Nick Velvet), Ron Goulart, Lawrence Block (Chip Harrison), Jeremiah Healy (John Cuddy), Ed McBain, S.J. Rozan, Anne Perry, Michael Malone (Cuddy Mangum), Thomas H. Cook, Penzler's wife Lisa Michelle Atkinson, Rupert Holmes, Charles Ardai, Andrew Klavan, Jonathan Santlofer, and Mary Higgins Clark (Alvirah Meehan). The 2010 chapbook is by Megan Abbott. Readers who want a copy will have to make a purchase at The Mysterious Bookshop, either in the store or online. § Drewey Wayne Gunn, Professor Emeritus at Texas A&M University-Kingsville, is author of THE GAY MALE SLEUTH IN PRINT AND FILM (2005) and editor of THE GOLDEN AGE OF GAY FICTION (2009), a collection of essays, including his own "Down These Queer Streets a Man Must Go," and a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and a Benjamin Franklin Award.
Reviewed by Drewey Wayne Gunn, October 2010
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