I have turned away from crime fiction a long time, especially the Ellery Queen/Agatha Christie whodunnit variety. I do very much like classic Poe and hardboiled (Dashiel Hammett, Raymond Chandler, which definitely helped me enjoy William Gibson ;-), and can take in the odd Holmes pastiche, but not much beyond that.
Until CrimeWave 5. I basically bought it becasue I liked The Third Alternative, and Andy Cox edited CrimeWave as well. I started reading it with no particular high expectations (rather the contrary), but the first three stories completely blew me away.
In retrospect this was because I subconsciously expected the same old, cliche-ridden crime stories. CrimeWave 5 demolished all my preconceptions about crime fiction. All the stories were dark, gritty, visceral without reverting to gore, fresh, sharply written with a very modern sensibility.
Awesome. Superb.
I subscribed and bought all the back issues.
Quality-wise, CrimeWave 4 and CrimeWave 7 are probably better, but number 5 will always have a special place in my heart as it so spectacularly shattered my prejudices.
The thing with the CrimeWave series is that Andy Cox only releases a new one when he has enough top quality stories, meaning only about one per year is released. But when it comes out: joy, pure joy!
And while my main fiction diet is SF and fantasy, crime fiction sometimes crawls up on me from unexpected angles. For instance, I read a short story by Walter Mosley in F&SF, liked it so much I bought Futureland, and loved that so much I bought Blue Light and The Man in my Basement, although I haven’t found the time to read these two yet. I’ll probably wind up buying some of his Easy Rawlins novels, too