BEST DETECTIVE STORIES OF THE YEAR 1971

Mr. Hubin mourns the diminishing market which perhaps accounts for the fact that seven of the fifteen stories here are from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and four from the much more ordinary Alfred Hitchcock periodical. Not from either come Borges' cryptogrammic scholarship in ""Death and the Compass"" (via The Aleph, etc.) and two-time Edgar winner Joe Gores' ""The Andrech Samples"" -- science-fiction really. Lael Littke's ""Mrs. Twiller Takes a Trip"" is a charmer about a department store booster (she's the only woman represented); and the others are standard-branded Treat, Davidson, Michael Gilbert, etc. Not as good a collection as Ellery Queen's Headliners (p. 466) and no cross-coverage of titles, just authors. One guesses the Queen's have divine first rights.