Jack of All Mystery Trades

PW Talks with Otto Penzler

by Peter Cannon -- Publishers Weekly, 5/15/2006

Otto Penzler, the founder of Mysterious Press, is also the proprietor of Manhattan's Mysterious Bookshop, has his own imprint at Harcourt, writes a weekly mystery column for the New York Sun and edits anthologies, including the annual Best American Mystery Stories and the true-crime Best American Crime Writing.

How many anthologies have you edited recently?

Seven since last October, when we relocated the Mysterious Bookshop from West 56th Street, where it had been for 29 years, to Warren Street in TriBeCa.

How do you like your new neighborhood?

I was reluctant to leave midtown, which I knew so well, but I'm loving it downtown. I get more walk-in traffic at the store than I used to.

Whose idea was it to publish a series of sports-themed mystery anthologies?

For years I had wanted to do an anthology of all-original baseball crime stories. I already had a title, Murderers Row, after the fabled 1927 Yankees. Then one year at ABA, as BEA used to be called, I met Michael Viner of New Millennium Press, who proposed we make a deal for a series of sports-themed anthologies.

Didn't you and Michael Viner have a falling out?

The less I say about that guy the better. After doing the first three titles with New Millennium—on baseball, boxing and football—I placed the rest of the series with Mysterious Press, starting with the tennis book, Murder Is My Racquet.

Soon to be published is Murder in the Rough (Reviews, Apr. 17), an anthology of golf mysteries. Are you a golfer?

Not at all. I grew up in the Bronx, which has only one golf course.

What about other sports?

I've always been an athlete. I was a really good baseball player and handball player. I was okay at football and basketball. At college [the University of Michigan], I played second base on the baseball team.

What made you a mystery fan?

When I was 10 years old, I read my first Sherlock Holmes story, "The Red-headed League," in an anthology. This was during library class at school. I hadn't finished the story by the time the bell rang and I couldn't wait to get back to it. I just loved it.

What are you working on now?

I'm editing a reprint anthology for Pegasus Books, Uncertain Endings, which contains mystery stories with no solutions, like Frank Stockton's "The Lady or the Tiger." This is another book I've always wanted to do. I'm also editing an anthology of mystery stories about poker.