The Best Private Eye Stories of the Year 2025

Guest Editor Matt Coyle and Series Editor Michael Bracken read hundreds of private eye stories, ultimately selecting the twenty stories included here as The Best Private Eye Stories of the Year. The included stories represent the work of long-establish private-eye writers as well as those just beginning their publishing journey, and they were found in genre publications such as Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, anthologies such as Private Dicks and Disco Balls, and in unexpected publications such as Jerry Jazz Musician-proving that the private eye genre is alive and well in short form.

Matt Coyle, guest editor, is author of the bestselling Rick Cahill crime series. His books have won the Anthony, Shamus, Lefty, and San Diego Book Awards, among others. He was named the San Diego Writers Festival 2021 Mystery Writer of the Year and received the Odin Award from the San Diego Writers and Editors Guild in 2024.

Michael Bracken, series editor, is an Edgar and Shamus Award nominee and three-time Derringer Award winner. Additionally, he is the editor of three dozen anthologies, including a Derringer Award winner and three Anthony Award nominees. He is a recipient of the Short Mystery Fiction Society's Golden Derringer for Lifetime Achievement and, in 2024, was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters.