Otto Penzler is president and CEO of MysteriousPress.com and proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. Long regarded as one of the world’s foremost authorities on crime, mystery, and suspense fiction, he has spent decades shaping the field as a publisher, editor, bookseller, and champion of both classic and contemporary crime writing.
In 1975, Penzler founded The Mysterious Press, a publishing house that became one of the most respected names in mystery and suspense fiction. He sold the company to Warner Books in 1989, reacquired the imprint in 2010, and continued publishing literary crime fiction through Grove/Atlantic. Since January 2021, The Mysterious Press has again been independently owned. Through MysteriousPress.com, in partnership with Open Road Integrated Media, he publishes both original works and classic crime fiction.
In fall 2018, Penzler established Penzler Publishers, which introduced American Mystery Classics, a line dedicated to bringing distinguished mystery and detective novels back into print, many after decades of unavailability. In September 2020, he launched Scarlet, an imprint devoted to psychological and domestic suspense. Charles Perry serves as publisher of all Penzler Publishers imprints, and Luisa Smith is editor-in-chief of Scarlet.
Penzler’s contributions to the mystery world extend well beyond book publishing. For seventeen years, he published The Armchair Detective, the Edgar Award-winning quarterly journal devoted to the study of mystery and suspense fiction. He also created Otto Penzler Books and The Armchair Detective Library, further expanding his influence on the genre’s publishing landscape.
A prolific and highly respected editor, Penzler has assembled numerous landmark anthologies, including The Big Book of Espionage Stories, The Big Book of Reel Murders, The Big Book of Female Detectives, The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories, and The Best American Noir of the Century, co-edited with James Ellroy. From 1997 to 2020, he served as series editor of The Best American Mystery Stories, working with an extraordinary roster of guest editors that included Robert B. Parker, Sue Grafton, Ed McBain, Donald E. Westlake, Lawrence Block, James Ellroy, Michael Connelly, Nelson DeMille, Joyce Carol Oates, Scott Turow, Carl Hiaasen, George Pelecanos, Jeffery Deaver, Lee Child, Harlan Coben, Robert Crais, Lisa Scottoline, Laura Lippman, James Patterson, Elizabeth George, John Sandford, Louise Penny, Jonathan Lethem, and C.J. Box.
His work has earned some of the mystery field’s highest honors. He won Edgar Awards for Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection in 1977 and The Lineup in 2010. Mystery Writers of America also honored him with the Ellery Queen Award in 1994 and the Raven Award, the organization’s highest non-writing honor, in 2003.
Born on July 8, 1942, Otto Penzler lives in New York and Connecticut.
