The Best American Mystery & Suspense series has a new editor, and that editor is me! I'm very excited about this and look forward to reading your mysterious, suspenseful American stories, which you can submit to [email protected]. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/newsbrief/index.html?record=2876

I have started reading, as it is somehow September already, but will look at all submissions and welcome recommendations if you have read any particularly wonderful stories published this year.

Here's what I have to say about Otto Penzler. On a personal level, I am of course pleased to take the reins away from a man who once called me stupid and racist and demanded I lose my editing job for criticizing Linda Fairstein. I'm only human.

But Otto edited this anthology for 23 years and I know that he did it out of love for the genre. Otto and I have this in common, as well as a fundamental belief in our own taste, and in its relevance and communion with the American mystery readership.

I know there has been some concern, which I will pretend to humor, that Best American Mystery will become Most Marginalized American Mystery, Whites Need Not Apply. But it is insulting to equate a desire for new blood and diversity with a disregard for quality.

I have no particular mandate from HMH, but they would be right to be surprised if I handed them an anthology that looked the same as one edited by Otto. This is because Otto and I are different people.

Every reader from your mom to the head of a publishing house looks for quality according to their own taste, and taste folds in all kinds of personal bias. This is why publishing will never fix its diversity problem by buying diverse books without hiring diverse editors.

I gravitate toward some stories over others not because of a secret agenda but because I have opinions, a worldview, and a pulse.