Otto Penzler

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Otto Penzler (born July 8, 1942 ) is the editor and CEO of MysteriousPress.com in the USA and owner of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. Penzler is considered the world's leading authority on suspense literature.

Life

Otto Penzler was the son of a German-American woman and a German father. He grew up in New York. Penzler graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in literature .

Penzler founded the publishing house The Mysterious Press in 1975 , which he sold in 1989 to the then publishing house Warner Books . In 2010 Penzler acquired The Mysterious Press back as an imprint and has now published original books as an imprint with Grove / Atlantic as well as classic thrillers at MysteriousPress.com in collaboration with Open Road Integrated Media . He was the editor of The Armchair Detective , the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) award-winning quarterly magazine that covered mystery and suspense fiction for seventeen years. Penzler also founded the publishing house The Armchair Detective Library , which reprints classic crime literature for collectors as well as libraries and libraries. He published a. a. the original editions by Eric Ambler , Kingsley Amis , Isaac Asimov , Robert Bloch , James M. Cain , Raymond Chandler , Jerome Charyn , Len Deighton , Stanley Ellin , James Ellroy , Patricia Highsmith , PD James , HRF Keating , Peter Lovesey , Ed McBain , Ross Macdonald , Marcia Muller , Ellis Peters , Ruth Rendell , Mickey Spillane , Ross Thomas , Donald E. Westlake and Cornell Woolrich . Since 2002 he has published an anthology with Thomas H. Cook ; Title: The Best American Crime Writing . He also wrote the weekly column The Crime Scene for the New York Sun . The newspaper ceased to appear on September 30, 2008.

From Penzler's around 60,000 books in his private library, a significant number of English thrillers and spy novels were auctioned off on April 8, 2010 by the Swann Gallery in New York . In autumn 2018 Otto Penzler founded Penzler Publishers , through which he wrote classic crime novels, e.g. B. reissued by Mary Roberts Rinehart , John Dickson Carr or Ellery Queen . The publishing house WW Norton & Company took over the distribution.

Penzler lives with his wife Lisa Atkinson in New York and Connecticut .

Work

As a publisher

  • Otto Penzler Books . An imprint by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2005–2010).
  • The Armchair Detective Library . Reproduced classic detective novels for collectors and libraries.
  • The Mysterious Press . Founded 1975. Sold to Warner Books in 1989; Bought back by Penzler in 2009 and now an imprint at Grove / Atlantic.
  • The Armchair Detective . Quarterly magazine about suspense literature from 1967–1997.
  • MysteriousPress.com. An eBook company powered by Open Road Integrated Media .
  • Penzler Publishers . A publisher for new classic crime literature; It is distributed by the New York publisher WW Norton & Company .
  • Scarlet . A joint publishing company with Pegasus Books that specializes in psychological tension for female readers.

As the editor of annual series

  • The Best American Mystery Stories. Annual series since 1997 with guest editors.
  • The Best American Crime Writing. Annual series since 2002 together with Thomas H. Cook and other guest editors.

As the editor of new books, anthologies and story collections

  • 1984: The Medical Center Murders (German: The mysterious murders in the clinic . Heyne, Munich 1985, ISBN 978-3-453-02187-7 ); together with Lisa Drake
  • 1995: The Crown Crime Companion: The Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time; together with Mickey Friedman
  • 1996: Murder For Love (German time to die . Goldmann, Munich 1996, ISBN 978-3-442-43453-4 )
  • 1998: The 50 Greatest Mysteries of All Time
  • 1998: Murder For Revenge
  • Racheengel - the great crime thriller reader . Goldmann, Munich 1998, ISBN 978-3-442-43935-5
  • 1999: Murder and Obsession . (German. Because murder has many tongues . Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2001, ISBN 978-3-404-14641-3 ); Featuring: Elizabeth George
  • 2000: Best American Mystery Stories of the Century; together with Tony Hillerman
  • 2001: Murderer's Row
  • 2001: Murder On the Ropes
  • 2005: Dangerous Women (dt. Mordsfrauen . Aufbau TB, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-7466-2265-1 ); Contributor: Evan Hunt, pen name of Ed McBain
  • 2005: Dangerous Women (German Murderous Affairen . Structure TB, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-7466-2355-9 ); Contributor: John Connolly
  • 2006: Murder in the Rough
  • 2006: Murder at the Racetrack
  • 2006: Murder at the Foul Line
  • 2007: The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps
  • 2007: Dead Man's Hand: Crime Fiction at the Poker Table
  • 2007: The Vicious Circle: Mystery and Crime Stories by Members of the Algonquin Round Table
  • 2009: The Lineup: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives
  • 2009: The Vampire Archive
  • 2009: Black Noir: Mystery, Crime, and Suspense Stories by African-American Writers
  • 2010: Christmas at the Mysterious Bookshop
  • 2010: The Greatest Russian Stories of Crime and Suspense
  • 2010: The Best American Noir of the Century
  • 2010: The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories
  • 2010: Agents of Treachery
  • 2011: The Big Book of Adventure Stories
  • 2012: The Big Book of Ghost Stories
  • 2013: The Big Book of Christmas Stories (Ger. A corpse for Advent: the big book of Christmas thrillers. Ehrenwirth, Cologne 2016, ISBN 978-3-431-03966-5 )
  • 2013: Kwik Krimes
  • 2014: The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries
  • 2014: The Best American Mystery Stories of the Nineteenth Century
  • 2015: The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories
  • 2016: The Big Book of Jack the Ripper
  • 2016: Silent Night, Deadly Night
  • 2017: The Big Book of Rogues and Villains
  • 2018: The Big Book of Female Detectives

Guest appearances in literature

  • 1999 In his Christmas story The Burglar Who Smelled Smoke , Lawrence Block had Otto Penzler perform in his Mysterious Bookshop in New York
  • 2008 Elmore Leonard 's novel Up In Honey's Room is about an escaped German soldier of the Waffen-SS named Otto Penzler

Awards

Web links

Individual references, comments

  1. ↑ Hamburg is given in the IMDb as the place of birth. Zauberspiegel online states New York as the place of birth. The English-language Wp does not indicate a place of birth, but is limited to the indication of Germany . A clear statement from Penzler himself was not found. For this reason, the place of birth is not stated (partly in English, all sources accessed on January 27, 2020)
  2. ↑ Original: crime, mystery and suspense fiction
  3. ↑ cf. fantasticfiction (accessed January 27, 2020)
  4. ↑ Auction catalog of The Otto Penzler Collection of British Espionage & Thriller Fiction (English, accessed January 27, 2020)
  5. ↑ The German first edition is not listed in the DNB , but can be found on WorldCat
  6. ↑ This book could not be assigned to any English-language edition
  7. ↑ 2005 as Murder is My Racquet published
  8. ↑ cf. Mystery Writers of America (English-language Wp), currently not specified in the German Wp
  9. ↑ cf. 2012 winner , accessed January 20, 2020
  10. ↑ cf. Winner 2015 (accessed January 20, 2020)
  11. ↑ cf. Winner 2018 (English), accessed January 20, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Penzler, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American publisher, media entrepreneur, and author
DATE OF BIRTH July 8, 1942