Year's Best Mystery and Suspense Stories 1993

This nicely balanced collection of top-notch crime stories is culled from magazines and anthologies published last year. Stylistically, the stories range from Jo Bannister's cutely ironic short-short, ``The Poisoned Chalice,'' to the darkly literate menace that pervades Joyce Carol Oates's quietly shocking ``The Model.'' In ``The Man Who was the God of Love,'' Ruth Rendell brings a husband down from his self-constructed pedestal when his intellectual prowess is called into question; Peter Lovesey has a wife confront the fear that her husband is England's newest serial killer in ``You May See a Stranger;'' and Nancy Pickard speculates on the consequences when a no-good ex-boyfriend's death is allowed to reactivate a long-forgottten love in the aptly titled ``Sex and Violence.'' Other tales feature the proven talents of Donald Westlake, Max Allan Collins and Ed Gorman. Hoch helpfully includes honor rolls, a list of award winners and a necrology in several appendixes. (Oct.)