THE YEAR'S 25 FINEST CRIME AND MYSTERY STORIES: Third Annual Edition

Talk about instant classics! Virtually all the stories (23 of 25) assembled in this bargain-priced, albeit indiscriminate, collection have had earlier hardcover incarnations, and several of them have already been reprinted in earlier anthologies or in Mystery Scene's principal rival, Edward D. Hoch's annual roundup (p. 1026); so if the top-flight selections by Lawrence Block, Ruth Rendell, Doug Allyn, Julian Rathbone, and Tony Hillerman sound familiar, they probably are. The centerpiece here is Marcia Muller's novella ""The Wall"" -- a workmanlike job, but no classic, though it's introduced with the same hyperbolic praise lavished on its companions by Margaret Maron, Carole Nelson Douglas, Gillian Roberts, Joseph Hansen, Jonathan Gash, Robert Bloch, et al. But the standout among the general high competence is ""Spin-A-Rama,"" Jeremiah Healy's dirty little tale of political chicanery, the one story that could well turn up in an anthology 20 years from now.