TOP 5 THRILLER & CRIME FICTION SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS OF 2025
- wildremuda
- 6 hours ago
- 2 min read
This was a great year for short stories. Old pros showed us new sides and new voices were out there to be discovered. With my top five of collections and anthologies, you can do both.
BORN A RAMBLIN' MAN by Michel Lee Garrett- I had read a couple of Michel Lee Garrett's stories before, but the this collection made me realize how much she is an emerging talent in the genre. She understands the tropes, how to use them, twist them, and most of all have fun with them.
THE FINAL SCORE by Don Winslow- Winslow gives us four new novellas or "long short stories" - a one last heist with a poignant twist, a young man working his way through college by delivering booze from the local liquor store during the time of Sunday laws, a cop dealing with his problem cousin facing prison time, and a middle class man transformed by the prison time bad luck created for him. All are character based with Winslow's strong ,deliberate use of language.
TALES OF THE IMPOSSIBLE by Bill Pronzini - Pronzini collects his locked room or impossible mysteries, many featuring his series characters The Nameless Detective and Quincannon and Carpenter. This book won me over on the genre, showing me that that the genre can be rich in character and style and not just an exercise in puzzle plot.
SLEUTHS JUST WANNA' HAVE FUN; PRIVATE EYES IN THE MATERIALISTIC EIGHTIES edited by Michael Bracken - The authors bring a sense of fun to these P.I. tales set in the Eighties, with many delivering human pathos. From dealing with a stolen Cabbage Patch doll to figuring out who shot J.R., these gumshoe yarns will bring back memories to those who grew up in the Reagan era.
SACRAMENTO NOIR edited by John Freeman- Authors use an unlikely city for noir to deliver many left of center crime stories. Each tale has the feel of a nineties independent movie.
I would have also put For Every Evil Under the Sun, that has three stories each by Alexandra Burt, Laura Oles, and V.P. Chandler, three writers who deserve attention, but since I wrote the introduction and was slightly involved in the book, I felt there was a conflict of interest.