Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - July 2016

In this issue

Any reader of EQMM will be familiar with The Department of First Stories, but might not know its history or which favorite authors got their start in its pages. The July issue, as part of our 75th-anniversary celebration, is sure to fill you in and entertain you at the same time, with new stories from nine of these popular authors, as well as an article on the history of the department by historian and archivist Marvin Lachman and a reflection on the process of choosing and publishing an author’s first short story by editor Janet Hutchings.

Leading off, novelist and Robert L. Fish Award winner Steven Saylor gives us a new tale in his Gordianus the Finder series (“The Staff of Asclepius”); another series continues in “The Red Tattoo” by short-story specialist Percy Spurlark Parker, featuring P.I. Trevor Oaks.

It’s mind over matter for characters in the emotional “Get Them Out” by Nancy Pickard, recipient of five major mystery awards, and the suspenseful “Flight” by Edgar nominee Trina Corey. Children and the sometimes-terrifying pressures of growing up take the lead in “The Hangman” by EQMM Readers Award winner David Dean and “The Peter Rabbit Killers” by acclaimed novelist Laura Benedict. Love, loyalty, and the lack thereof are major motives in Shamus and Barry award winner Brendan DuBois’s small-town thriller “The Man From Away” and in a twisty tale set in the upper echelons, “Consuming Passion,” by celebrated author of fiction and criticism Martin Edwards.

Obsession is the theme in “The Granite Kitchen,” a dark new narrative by David Morrell, creator of John Rambo. And we have, of course, included a story from a debut author, John H. Sherman, who brings his haunting tale “Black Monday” to the Department of First Stories.