Award-winning Box, the spirit behind Joe Pickett, chooses "twenty perfect pearls" in the 24th entry of general editor Otto Penzler's highly regarded series.Box's selections are surprisingly sunny considering the monster 2020 has turned into. Many of them celebrate human ingenuity. The title character in David Dean's "The Duelist" bests a formidable opponent with scant bloodshed. An ambitious woman outwits a sleazy politician in Jeffery Deaver's "Security." A wily Texas Ranger rescues undocumented immigrants in James Lee Burke's "Deportees." A budding musician foxes her dead neighbor's rapacious grandchildren in John Sandford's linguistic tour de force, "Girl With an Ax." Other tales highlight the strength of family ties, like David B. Schlosser's "Pretzel Logic," Michael Cebula's "Second Cousins," and Brian Cox's haunting "The Surrogate Initiative." Family ties don't always mean blood ties. Tom Franklin shows a policeman going to the mat for his late girlfriend's daughter in "On Little Terry Road." And a surprising stepmom helps Sheila Kohler's worried schoolgirl in "Miss Martin." As Rick McMahan demonstrates in "Baddest Outlaws," however, blood is still thicker than water, and a variety of other substances. The good guys aren't always good guys, as Richard Helms suggests in "See Humble and Die." And the bad guys aren't always bad guys, as Robin Yocum's aging mobster proves in "The Last Hit." All in all, this year's installment inspires hope that right will triumph, as it does in Pamela Blackwood's aptly named "Justice."A stellar collection for a year that hardly deserves it.

The 20 high-quality stories in this annual anthology showcase the talent of many authors genre fans may not be familiar with. The best entries offer variations on the theme of achieving justice, whether or not doing so is within the boundaries of the law. Brian Cox-s -The Surrogate Initiative- presents the conflict between truth and the demands of the legal system in a tale set in the near future, where robots are allowed on juries after court rulings that certain artificial intelligences, known as legal constructs, can constitute a jury of peers for human defendants. David Dean-s -The Duelist,- a historical, features a newcomer to Mississippi-s attempt to call to account a notorious duelist who has killed 12 men in affairs of honor. In Pamela Blackwood-s -Justice,- the murder of a disabled boy leads a man to a desperate ruse to nail a killer the law refuses to touch, and in Michael Cebula-s -Second Cousins,- the murder of a drug dealer may give a lawman a chance to avenge his mother-s death, even if it means bending the truth. Fans of literate crime fiction will be rewarded. (Nov.)