Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine - September/October 2020

In this issue

With crime stories, it’s all about the framing of the tale. In Steven Gore’s procedural “Inflection,” detectives must look beyond carefully laid out clues when a rare books dealer is found dead from an apparent mugging. A passion for truffles is the link between competing narratives in “Fruiting Bodies” by Jane Pendjiky. During WWII, a stranger’s story resonates for a boy enamored with true crime pulps in “Old Echoes” by Michael Nethercott. Equadoran P.I. Wilson Salinas is inspired by a missing person flier to track down the real story in “Buscando Túpac” by Tom Larsen. After a writeup in the papers, the price of fame is high for a local hero in Dave Zeltserman’s “Past Due.” A librarian revisits the stories behind artifacts prior to a fateful renovation in “Storage” by Dan Crawford. A cabby proves the perfect sounding board for a St. Louis riverboat gambler cum unofficial private eye in Christopher Latragna’s “Call It Sad, Call It Funny.” And a review of old case notes draws a retired divorce lawyer into a murder case in “Who Killed What’s Her Name?” by Sharon Jarvis. Meanwhile, commercial crime in ancient Babylon threatens plans for a caravan in Richard Freeborn’s “Family Harmony,” while a company’s secrets are conversation fodder in “You Said This Was Business” by Bob Tippee. A hermit seeks to preserve his artist father’s legacy in “Limited Edition” by John Paul Davies, while an artisan in Amsterdam becomes unmoored in “Anchored” by Wouter Boonstra. A hitman’s latest job leads to a new vocation in “The Beauty of Sunsets” by Jim Sallis. And for a London-based P.I., a homeless woman seems an unlikely murder victim in “Mrs. White Hart” by Elliot F. Sweeney. In our Booked & Printed column, Laurel Flores Fantauzzo steps outside of the box to look at some recent crime-related podcasts that are worth a listen. And an endearing character returns in Our Mystery Classic, Johnston McCulley’s “Thubway Tham and the Hoodoo Roll.”