The Best Mystery Stories of the Year: 2021 cover art

The Best Mystery Stories of the Year: 2021

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The Best Mystery Stories of the Year: 2021

By: Lee Child - editor and introduction, Otto Penzler - series editor
Narrated by: Matt Godfrey, Emily Sutton-Smith
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About this listen

Lee Child selects the 20 best mystery short stories of the year, including tales by Stephen King, Sara Paretsky, and many more.

Under the auspices of New York City's legendary mystery fiction specialty bookstore, The Mysterious Bookshop, and aided by Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler, international best seller Lee Child has selected the 20 most suspenseful, most confounding, and most mysterious short stories from the past year, collected now in one entertaining volume.

Includes stories by: Alison Gaylin, David Morrell, James Lee Burke, Joyce Carol Oates, Martin Edwards, Sara Paretsky, Stephen King, Sue Grafton (with a new, posthumously published work), and many more!

©2021 The Mysterious Press; Introduction copyright 2021 by Lee Child (P)2021 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books Anthologies & Short Stories Mystery Exciting Short Stories

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All stars
Most relevant
I thought they were all good stories, a few were excellent, glad I gave it a go.

Mostly Good

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Honestly, this could have been far better if entirely narrated by the female narrator. The male narrator (Matt), had absolutely NO depth of emotion in him. He made every tale he told sound as if it were taking place in the ‘40s or’50s!

Therefore the stories that he narrated were uninteresting on the whole.

Conversely, the few that were read by the female narrator (Emily) were very interesting, with a couple of exceptions (very dull tales), which made you wonder if these REALLY WERE the best for 2021?

I’m very glad that this compilation was included in the Plus Catalogue, because I’d feel really aggrieved if I had paid for it. Perhaps it’s a better book, but I’d hardly think so..

Give This A Miss

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Some stories are better than other, but overall this is a good collection.

It's a nice way to discover new authors and I'll look some up

Good short stories

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The narration didn’t lift the stories and it sounded like all the same characters in each story were from a 1950’s busy newsroom - I am not sure this is the best of the batch for that year? Glad when it finished tbh .

Poor narration

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The stories were good, mostly. Not sure if all could be qualified as the best during the period. The narration could have been better. It’s a good listen.

Mostly good stories, narration could be better.

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