Introduction
Miss Scarlet in the Library with a Crime Story
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Most people who don't read the mystery genre have a skewed perception of what the genre is. They believe that all mysteries are puzzle stories—Miss Scarlet in the Lib'ry with a Wrench. They know about Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple; they're familiar with Murder She Wrote and Elementary. They believe that every mystery story has a bloodless corpse at its core, and a brilliant amateur detective who can ferret out the killer with a single glance.
The mystery genre needs a new name.
I propose crime fiction.
Crime fiction encompasses what mystery has become. We can't really say that it's evolved past the body in the lib'ry, because the American father of the mystery is Edgar Allen Poe. He wrote about crime—The Tell-Tale Heart, which is about a guilty murderer, The Cask of Amontillado, a revenge story in which someone gets buried alive, and of course, that "first" detective story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, which Poe himself called a tale of "ratiocination." (Boy, am I glad that label didn't stick.)
Crime: murders, revenge, guilt—when bad things happen to good people or, even better in my opinion, when bad things happen to bad people. Crime encompasses everything from the cozy mystery, which is generally upbeat and bloodless to noir, which is generally bleak and blood-filled.
We have both cozies and noir stories in this, our seventh anthology in the Fiction River series. As Dean explained in his foreword, this is our first special edition. I wanted to do an extra push on this edition because, honestly, I adore crime fiction in all its forms.
All of the previous Fiction River anthologies had a crime story or two, but those stories were usually in a different genre: Urban fantasy detectives in Unnatural Worlds, evil mass murderers in How To Save The World, time-hopping criminals in Time Streams, kidnappers in Christmas Ghosts, magical murder in Hex in The City, and dead clones in Moonscapes.
But this volume focuses on the here and now, or in some cases, the then and now. The real world, as the case may be. Crime-ridden and imperfect. Some stories have heroes who come to the rescue. A few have detectives who use their talents to solve crimes. A few stories have no heroes and no happy ending, just the darkness that can be real life.
Each story features a crime, but not all the crimes in this volume are murders. Some crimes are small—traffic stops, cheating at cards—and others are so vast that they envelope an entire culture.
Several stories have twists that you can see coming, and others are so subtle that you'll have to stop and think about what kind of crime actually occurred. The stories surprise in other ways. Just by changing gender, for example, an old tale becomes new again. The stories also jump all over in time—from the Great Depression to the 1960s to the Reagan Era—and back to the present.
I'm particularly proud of the mix of storytellers who've joined us for this volume, from newcomer Karen Fonville to award-winner Kate Wilhelm whose work spans genres and decades.
When I invited the writers into this volume, the only parameter I put on them was that the story needed to be a crime story. I had expectations, though. I invited a mix of cozy writers and noir writers, writers known for dark fiction and writers known for light fiction.
What I got surprised me. Freed from rules, the writers explored new territory. The cozy writers wrote dark tales; the noir writers wrote light tales. It all balanced, even though not in the way that I expected.
This volume has become exactly what I hoped it would be: a snapshot of the modern mystery genre. Or, as the title says, the modern crime genre.
I had a great deal of fun compiling this special edition of Fiction River. I hope you have as much fun reading it.
—Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Lincoln City, OR
September 2, 2013
