Twenty five years ago Thanksgiving week, I published 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century, a book based on my work as director of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. The project brought together booksellers from across the US and Canada to survey the twentieth century and agree on a list of our “favorite” books. We released the list in the fall of 1999 and we released the book based on the list in 2000.
It was the heyday of the independent mystery bookshop. There were 100 some stores; more than half belonged to our association. The proprietors were passionate and opinionated and devoted to the genre. A 1992 article from The New York Times hints at the lively diversity of stores in this period. Working on the list and then on the book was a joy. The opportunity to interact with this fabulous group of bookselling colleagues was enormously satisfying, and it came at an especially fraught time for me. Through 1999, our own store was failing, largely because the whole downtown community where were located was hollowed out by corporate evisceration. Even worse, my wife was battling cancer. The 100 Favorites project kept me going through these challenges.
Looking back at the list from the vantage of 25 years is itself an entertaining, joyous and bittersweet exercise. As I wrote in the introduction to the book, the books were our best friends. In most all cases, that’s still true. I still cherish many of these books and authors, and I have returned to them over and over through the years. It remains a great list, a nice overview of many of the genre’s twentieth century high points. Sure, there are a few titles that feel like weak choices, and the recency bias charge seems like a bigger problem now than it did in 1999. ln my introduction, I tried to write a defense of the fact that so many of the books on the list were published so late in the century. I’m not as happy with that defense today. Still, lists like this are made to be challenged as much as respected, right?
Flaws and all, I am still happy with the list and thrilled with how the book turned out. The book brought together over 50 contributors from nearly 40 stores for 100 short essays extolling the virtues of our selections. The reviews take a wide variety of approaches, some formal and straightforward, others are personal and informal. All are engaging, passionate, lively and, in their own ways, authoritative. It’s great fun to revisit these essays, and perhaps even more fun to read through part two of the book where I invited booksellers to reflect on and add to the list. I remain enormously proud of what we accomplished with this book.
This week, I celebrate the 25th anniversary with new resources online: the full 100 list citing all the reviewers and a bookshop.org shopping list (75 of the 100 books are in print, which seems to me a very high percentage). I’m also offering 25% off copies of 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century (with free shipping to US addresses).
The bittersweet? The era of the specialty mystery bookstore ended long ago. Most all of the stores that were a part of the project are closed, including my own. Only a handful remain in business, and as far as I know, no new mystery bookstore has opened in years. The mystery booksellers association wrapped up operations over a decade ago. Some of the individuals who contributed to the book are still around, but we’ve lost so many through the years.
Were we all still around and still active in mystery bookselling, I might suggest that we do a new list, our 25 favorite books of the first quarter century. Some choices come to mind immediately: Michael Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer, Laura Lippman’s What the Dead Know, S.J. Rozan’s Paper Son, Colin Cotterill’s The Coroner’s Lunch, Tana French’s Broken Harbor, Alan Gordon’s The Widow of Jerusalem, Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club, Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s Shadow of the Wind, Steve Hockensmith’s Holmes on the Range, Janice Hallett’s The Appeal. We’d argue about which Louise Penny to include (because they’re all so good).
What a conversation that would be!