Here there be dragons. And vampires. And not-so-jolly old elves. For cozy lovers looking for something a little off the beaten track, the Dana Stabenow-edited (and aptly titled) Unusual Suspects (Ace, $14.00 tpb, $7.99 mmpb) makes for an ideal stocking stuffer. Like its predecessor, Powers of Detection (2006), this cheeky little paperback offers a refreshing and (mostly) lighthearted collection of stories that blur—and sometimes completely erase—the line between mystery and fantasy. Of course the big draw here is a new Sookie Stackhouse tale by Charlaine Harris, but other detectives include Humphrey Bogart, back from the dead, and Santa himself. Contributors include John Straley, Sharon Shinn, Laura Anne Gilman, Simon Green and Laurie King. Face it, toots: you ain’t in Kansas anymore.

Also straddling genres is Crimes by Moonlight: Mysteries from the Dark Side (Berkley, $24.95). If you enjoyed Unusual Suspects, then you’re going to love this stunning collection of 20 all original mystery/fantasy stories. It’s sure to appeal to the True Blood/Twilight crowd. Heck, it’s even edited by current mystery/fantasy go-to gal Charlaine “Sookie, Sookie, Sookie” Harris, who chips in another tasty tale from the ever-expanding Sookiverse.

But there are more than just bloodsuckers on tap here—there are ghosts, werewolves, witches, phantom ships, and psychics. Mike Hammer even shows up, in a supernaturally-tingled hardboiled tale by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins. Parnell Hall serves up a tongue-in-cheek (or is it fang-in-neck?) send up of the whole mystery/fantasy craze in “Death of a Vampire.” Other guests at this feast include Harley Jane Kozak, Lou Kemp, William Kent Krueger, Margaret Maron, and Carolyn Hart, Steve Brewer, Barbara D'Amato, Brendan DuBois, Elaine Viets and Mike Wiecek. Got your silver bullets? Lock and load.

There is power in a group. At least writing power. Authors who blog together not only seem to attract fans together but it means less work for each of those authors. After all, I would rather an author be working on a novel than spending time writing a blog.

As one who writes two blogs, this one for Mystery Scene, and also Off the Page for the Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, I know how much time these can take. Blogs are also a great procrastination tool...which is pretty much a hobby for every writer I know.

While I am not convinced that authors who blog by themselves really draw in the fans, I think that those who do it as a group do. No, this is not based on any scientific research, or even any feeble research, or any research at all. Instead it is just a gut feeling that comes from attending myriad mystery writers conferences since 1995. I’ve seen first-hand the community of mystery writers; how when a fan approaches one that writer will beam and express their thanks but also point out a fellow writer or two that the fan may also like. That always seemed to me to be a win win situation—by the time the fan had read the other authors the first author’s new book would be out.

Another appeal of group blogs is that these are not just discussions of writing. Sometimes the posts are about dive bars, or reality shows or Susan Boyle or traveling. Just about all of them also feature guest blogs. Here’s some group blogs that I regularly check out. No, it is not a list of all the group blogs. I don’t mean to leave anyone out. So feel free to add your own blog to the comments section, or tell me what you think of these group blogs.

The Femmes Fatales (Charlaine Harris, Toni L.P. Kelner, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Mary Saums, Donna Andrews, Dana Cameron, Kris Neri, Elaine Viets)

First, I love the name. Second, is this a set of powerhouse authors or what? This is a newsletter group that has been together for many years. While some members retired and the group suffered one death—the late Elizabeth Daniels Squire—the group continues.

Jungle Red Writers (Hallie Ephron, Rosemary Harris, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Rhys Bowen, Jan Brogan, Roberta Isleib)

I also love the name of this blog. It makes me think of a great scene in the classic movie The Women (the first one, not the remakes). This group calls itself a salon of six mystery writers. Here, it’s all about writing. And not writing. And our search for motive in life, love, fiction and reality.

The Kill Zone (Michelle Gagnon, Joe Moore, John Gilstrap, John Ramsey Miller, Clare Langley-Hawthorne, James Scott Bell, How Hartlaub, Jordan Dane, Nancy Cohen, Kathryn Lilley)

OK, I admit, I have a self-serving interest in this blog. I was a guest blogger for a question and answer session. Here’s that link. The site often has guest bloggers, most of them authors.

The Lipstick Chronicles (Nancy Martin, Sarah Strohmeyer, Elaine Viets, Harley Jane Kozak, Brunonia Barry, Nancy Pickard, Jacqueline Winspear, Kathy Reschini Sweeney, Cornelia Read, Louise Penny, Diane Chamberlain, Heather Graham, Margaret Maron, Hank Phillippi Ryan)

This site never fails to make me smile—how could it not when it’s billed as “Where the Book Tarts talk love, laughter, laundry and the mysteries of life.” But there are some serious subjects thoughtfully tackled.

Naked Authors (Ridley Pearson, Jacqueline Winspear, Paul Levine, James O. Born, Patricia Smiley, Cornelia Read)

So much to like here even though it has quit publishing since March 2010. Still lots of fun content in the archives. Among the archived blogs, check out the one that James O. Born wrote about Susan Boyle, when she was first on Britain’s Got Talent. You just don’t expect this tough Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent to be so taken with Boyle’s singing.

The Outfit (Laura Caldwell, Sean Chercover, Barbara D'Amato, Michael Allen Dymmoch, David Ellis, Jamie Freveletti, Bryan Gruley, Kevin Guilfoile, David Heinzmann, Libby Hellmann, Marcus Sakey)

This group has some of the best authors (as do the other blogs I’ve mentioned) and it contains Chicago authors who blog about one of my favorite cities. Like other group blogs, the authors talk about writing as well as issues of the day.

During an interview with Marcus Sakey for Mystery Scene Issue #106, he told me that The Outfit got its biggest readership boost last year when Guilfoile, fed up with what he cited as shoddy reporting, began to post about the murder of a Chicago dermatologist and his suspected killer, a former patient who fled to France. Guilfoile’s posts were eventually picked up by the Chicago newspapers and television stations. Now that’s the power of writers.

Poe’s Deadly Daughters (Lonnie Cruse, Sharon Wildwind, Elizabeth Zelvin, Sandra Parshall, Darlene Ryan, Julia Buckley)

The post about Charlie Brown suffering existential torment is just too cool for school.

The author Sara Paretsky has been named the recipient of the 2011 Mystery Writers of America (MWA) Grand Master Award, the highest honor given by the organization in recognition of extraordinary career achievement and contribution to the mystery genre.

Paretsky is best known for her award-winning V.I. Warshawski series, launched in 1982 with the publication of Indemnity Only. The series was one of the first to feature a gutsy female private investigator, now a favorite prototype of the genre. Decades later, the Chicago PI continues to be a protaganist remarkable for her intelligence, backbone, and humanity in works that have consistently refused to shy away from weighty issues ranging from 9/11 to health care to violence against women. In between penning a dozen Warshawski novels, Paretsky founded Sisters in Crime in 1986, and generated two standalone novels, a collection of short stories, and 2007 memoir, Writing in the Age of Silence.

"I'm so glad to win this," said Paretsky in a statement released by the MWA. "I'm glad to have this as my very own."

The Grand Master Award will be presented to Paretsky at the MWA Edgar Awards Banquet at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City on April 28, 2011. A PDF version of the full press release is available here.

Mystery Scene extends our heartfelt congratulations to Sara Paretsky on her honor. For more on the author Sara Paretsky from Mystery Scene, please see our #112 Holiday 2009 Issue, featuring a cover story with the author.

Each year series editor Otto Penzler reads voluminously among the year’s crime and mystery stories, very broadly defined, and selects 50 he likes the best. These are passed along to a guest editor, this year Lee Child, who narrows the field to 20 for inclusion in the annual volume of The Best American Mystery Stories. Those not selected are noted in a list of the year’s “Other Distinguished Mystery Stories.” In a valuable section of contributors’ notes the authors are invited to comment on the origins of their stories.

This is the fourth consecutive year I’ve done a full-scale review of this annual anthology, 2007 and 2008 in these pages, 2009 in The Weekly Standard. While Penzler and his guest editors have always provided good reading, I’ve complained about the over-emphasis on usually excellent but sometimes empty and pretentious stories from literary magazines and the comparative shortage of stories with the attributes—deceptive and intricate plotting, surprise, detection—that make the mystery a unique genre. This year, things are looking up.

The principal magazine markets are better represented than has been the case recently. Three entries are drawn from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and one from Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. (The honorable mention list includes another five from EQMM and four from AHMM.) Original anthologies account for half of Child’s 20 selections, literary journals for another five, and a posthumous single-author collection for one.

Five stories are standouts. Doug Allyn’s EQMM tale “An Early Christmas,” set in Northern Michigan, recounts the investigation of a lawyer’s death in a flaming car wreck. A genuine detective story, it superbly combines elements of theme, plot, character, and background. Score one for the genre magazines. The tale that immediately follows is equally distinguished but quite different. Mary Stewart Atwell’s “Maynard,” the very short but dense with incident account of a pregnant woman’s flight, challenges the reader with complexity and rewards with ultimate clarity. Score one for the literary journals, specifically Alaska Quarterly Review. John Dufresne’s “The Cross-Eyed Bear,” from the anthology Boston Noir, is a grimly powerful study of a priest who claims innocence of molesting an altar boy 20 years before. This great story and the author’s equally impressive contribution to the 2007 volume, “The Timing of Unfelt Smiles,” will spur me to seek out his novels. Another Boston Noir entry, Dennis Lehane’s “Animal Rescue,” whose enigmatic protagonist finds a puppy in a trash can, is a deftly crafted study of loneliness and human connection. Lynda Leidiger’s “Tell Me,” from Gettysburg Review, is a story not of a crime but of a crime victim whose head injury has impaired her sight and robbed her of mobility. Her loved ones are unsure how to deal with her condition. With an indeterminate ending, the painfully affecting tale casts the reader as detective.

Other good stories point up the volume’s laudable variety. The protagonist of Matt Bell’s dark and chilling “Dredge,” a very offbeat sort of detective story, puts a dead girl in his freezer and sets out to find her murderer. Jay Brandon’s legal whodunit “A Jury of His Peers,” set in 1842 San Antonio, is based on a remarkable incident in Texas history. The late Phyllis Cohen’s “Designer Justice” is another good courtroom story with an interesting surprise twist. Lyndsay Faye’s “The Case of Colonel Warburton’s Madness” consolidates her reputation as one of the best newer writers of Sherlockian pastiche. Gar Anthony Haywood’s surprising “The First Rule Is” concerns a retired pro basketball star easily underestimated. Jon Land’s “Killing Time,” about a professional killer who takes the place of a middle-school teacher, is pure action thriller. Philip Margolin’s “The House on Pine Terrace,” in which a policewoman dates a rich man she earlier arrested in a call girl sting operation, is the kind of multi-twist novel-in-miniature that might have appealed to last year’s guest editor, Jeffery Deaver, who didn’t manage to select a single tale of his own sort. Chris Muessig’s “Bias,” a police procedural about the shooting of a gas station attendant, was an EQMM first story. Mike Wiecek’s whodunit “The Shipbreaker” has an unusual background of dismantling ships for scrap metal in Chittagong, Bangladesh.

Author Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut’s rare pure crime story “Ed Luby’s Key Club” apparently was written but went unpublished in the 1950s. Clearly intended as a serial, it concerns an innocent husband and wife framed for murder in a corrupt town run by a former Al Capone bodyguard. It’s not a great story but surely would have found a pulp magazine market at least. Possibly it was never submitted.

In Penzler’s foreword, he refers to the amateur detective who “has taken time off from his or her primary occupation of cooking, gardening, knitting, writing, hairdressing, or shopping,” a good-natured dig at the cozy school of contemporary mystery fiction. Albert Tucher’s “Bismarck Rules,” though not the least bit cozy, features an amateur detective with an unusual occupation, a prostitute who is hired to accompany an ex-con to his colonoscopy.

Other contributors of worthwhile stories are Gary Shytengart, Joseph Wallace, and Ryan Zimmerman. Only R.A. Allen’s “The Emerald Coast” recalled the reservations I’ve had about previous volumes. Small town crooks take out a serial killer in a dreary slice-of-life tale without much apparent point.

For variety of setting, tone, and type of story, along with an effort to live up to the title, 2010’s volume ranks first among the last four. For sheer literary quality, it ranks second only to the 2008 volume, edited by George Pelecanos.

The Best American Noir of the Century, edited by Otto Penzler and James Ellroy features noir of the literary kind. For those of you for whom the shot glass is always half empty and the forecast is always grim, you can’t do much better this sterling collection of 39 tales from the darkness at the edge of town, full of characters doomed to bad choices and worse luck. You can gripe about the editors’ definition of noir or some of their omissions, but they’ve done a great job here, offering lesser known tales by such expected perpetrators as Cornell Woolrich, Jim Thompson, James M. Cain, Mickey Spillane, Evan Hunter and Patricia Highsmith as well as a few outliers, such as Dorothy B. Hughes, David “Rambo” Morrell and Lorenzo “Sleepers” Carcaterra and a few authors even the most devoted noir devotee may not be familiar with. Tod Robbins, anyone?

Fans of James Ellroy never seem to get tired of hearing—and the author himself never seems to get tired of telling—the story of his misbegotten youth. By now the faithful know it by heart: his parents’ troubled marriage and divorce, his mother’s subsequent murder (still unsolved), his wild years of substance abuse as a second story creeper and panty-sniffer, and his final crawl out of the murk to become one of the most celebrated crime fiction authors in the world (the French love him almost as much as Jerry Lewis).

He’s at it again in his second memoir, digging even deeper into himself. The Hilliker Curse (Knopf, $24.95) is a must-read for anyone who’s ever been drawn into Ellroy’s sordid but enthralling fictional world. And just to set the proper mood, the book boasts one of the most squirm-inducing subtitles of the year: “My Pursuit of Women.” Ladies, lock your doors.