Love and passion are often the heart of crime stories. Herein are thirteen stories of love, loss, and questionable choices for those passionate about short stories.
A young banker’s life is upended when he is jailed for embezzlement, but he gets out in time to wreak havoc as “The Wedding Crasher” in a new tale by Doug Allyn. A thief tries crashing the funeral of his beloved ex-wife in Robert Mangeot’s “Star of Zoe.” And O’Neil De Noux’s New Orleans P.I. Lucien Caye takes on the case of a hapless ex-con in “The Peeschwet.”
Amanda Witt’s tale of a young mother’s desperation to escape an abusive relationship is tense in “Up in the Air.” Franz Margitza’s “Eulalia” is a nod to Edgar Allan Poe, with its dark themes around love. Eric Rutter’s “Mrs. Carter” recounts a wife’s heartbreak when Pinkerton detectives arrest her husband.
In “Louisa and the Tunnel” by Marianne Wilski Strong, a Cape May resident’s love of Louisa May Alcott stories helps her understand why a neighbor guards her property. A woman working late at a courthouse hears the painful wail of a departed spirit (she thinks) in Cheryl Skupa’s “Ghost in the Nemaha County Courthouse.”
Radio producer Margo Banning is again pressed into spy-catching service in Terence Faherty’s WWII-era “Margo and the Red Carnation.” In William Burton McCormick’s “Murder in the Second Act,” two sisters solve a crime set around a traveling theater troupe. Kevin Egan’s savvy courthouse security officer, Foxx, aids a fellow worker in “The Courthouse Paperboy.” And Mat Coward returns with a tale that begins with a menacing note in “What Invisible Means.” Finally, the buck stops with Mark Milstein’s fast-food restaurant manager when an electrical outage cascades into a series of events in “A Curious Transaction.”
Joining us this issue is Laurel Flores Fantauzzo as our new book reviewer. 
Once again, we’re pleased to present a bouquet of thirteen tales featuring characters we think you’ll fall in love with.

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.”

One of the attractions of crime fiction is the complexity of the plotlines. In addition to the narrative of the investigation, there is a parallel retelling of the crime, the story of the cover-up is also the story of its unveiling. In “Second Sight,” David Edgerley Gates explores how two officers, at two points in time, approach a case of a missing boy in New Mexico. In “The Amputation Pit,” Nancy Pauline Simpson’s early twentieth century sheriff and the nurse he is sweet on put their heads together to figure out how the remains of a young woman came to be in a pit of bones of amputated limbs dating back to the Civil War. A woman trying to understand her son’s suicide recreates his network in “The Substitute Dealer” by Jeff Soloway, while an art student confronts some uncomfortable truths in Elaine Menge’s “Plein Air.” 

The landscape of a good mystery story can be as twisty as its plot. In a nod to Borges, Robert Lopresti places “The Library of Poisonville” in an underground bunker with beguiling contents. A fraternity pursues a solo hike on a winter’s night through the New Hampshire woods in Susan Oleksiw’s “The Pledge.” Competitive half brothers navigate their drug lord father’s business in R. T. Lawton’s “Reckoning with Your Host.” A defense advocate navigates a legal maze in “A Beastly Trial,” a historical which author Mark Thielman notes is based on actual practices of the time. A famous jockey pursues the truth in “Mystic Dream” by John F. Dobbyn

The streets of San Francisco in a near future offers an unusual setting for our thirteenth Black Orchid Novella Award-winning story, “The Red Taxi” by Ted Burge. The beautiful, volcanic landscape of Hawaii can be perilous to tourists in Albert Tucher’s “JDLR.” And Wayne J. Gardiner considers the particular challenges of interviewing for a job with the Mob in “Strickly Business.”

Getting trapped is a primal fear, and our modern world offers no reprieve. Daily we’re caught in traffic jams, shut up in elevators, chained to a desk, and for some, nabbed by the police. Nor are we free of psychological traps. Fiction is one way to work through your fears, and this issue of AHMM offers some thrilling stories of entrapment and escape.
In our cover story by Joslyn Chase, a woman must leave home to work at her uncle’s Whitechapel pub, “The Wolf and Lamb,” during the terror wrought by Jack the Ripper. Joseph Walker describes the journey of a woman escaping an abusive marriage in “Etta at the End of the World.” Characters revisit the heady days of college in Elizabeth Zelvin’s “Reunion.” A private jet is the setting for Ken Brosky’s locked-room story “Airless Confinement.” In 1920s NYC, a shoeshine gets caught up in a scheme in “Probable Cause” by John G. Wimer.
Revenge motivates in Sarah Weinman’s “Limited Liability,” and Janice Law’s widow takes justice into her own hands in “The Client.” Bob Tippee’s executive draws on his character failings in “A Bias for Action,” while Officer Grant Tripp’s brother falls under suspicion for a string of robberies in Eve Fisher’s “Brother’s Keeper.” The perpipatetic Buck and Wiley return in Parker Littlewood’s “Buck Solves the Case,” while two girls find the body of a drowned bank robber in Michael Bracken’s “Sleepy River.”
We offer whodunits featuring distinctive PIs. Jeff Cohen’s Samuel Hoenig finds that being on the autism spectrum gives him an edge in “The Question of the Befuddled Judge.” Mark Thielman’s handsome PI solves the murder of a store manager in “The Case of the Cereal Killer.” Mystery writer Shanks is called to help a music producer on the eve of his death in Rob Lopresti’s “Shanks Saves the World.”
Finally, we are delighted to introduce a new feature: former police detective Lee Lofland will offer in each issue insights into the working lives and daily realities of those involved in law enforcement.

Sometimes exposing the truth involves donning a disguise. But subterfuge and misdirection add spice to crime stories, and this issue is chock full of reversals and surprises. In “Night Train for Berlin” by William Burton McCormick, individuals at opposite ends of the political spectrum are equally threatened by two brutal regimes. In these pages you’ll find sleuths in the guise of an eighteenth century shipmate in Joan Druett’s “The Botanist” or a retired chemistry professor in Jim Fusilli’s “Albert January and His First Love.” An actor gets a job as an investigator at a plant where employees claim they’ve seen a ghost in Catherine Dilts’s “Industrial Gold,” while an aging actor is at the mercy of is his caretakers in Tom Savage’s “Best Performance.” Sheriff Ray is once again outsmarted by mystery writer Jennifer Parker in John F. Floyd’s Mississippi-set “Quarterback Sneak.” Martin Limón brings back his Army investigators in Korea in “Chow Hall.” A sheriff in the Australian outback goes to extraordinary lengths to protect a neighbor in “Something Off” by Michael Caleb Tasker. A parolee trying to get her life back together has the bad fortune to be the first on the scene of a crime in “The DQ Rules” by Chuck Greaves. A troupe of traveling ironmongers in Biblical times is caught in the fighting between the Kanaanites and the Israelites in Ken Wishnia’s “Bride of Torches.” Sheriff Gonzalo, in a small village in central mountains of Puerto Rico, comes to the aid of a woman whose neighbor is trying to take her land in Steve Torres’s “The Care of Widows and Orphans.” A hapless attorney is forced to represent a family running an illegal pearl operation in Robert Mangeot’s humorous tale “Lord, Spare the Bottom Feeders.” Hiring a hitman comes with an onerous contract in Larry Light’s “Scroll Down.” A precocious teen is the subject of bullies in Rachel Howzell Hall’s poignant story, “Little Thing.” These tales turn crime inside out in the guise of well-wrought fiction.

With the New Year we anticipate renewal and new beginnings, so perhaps you’ve noticed we’ve refreshed our masthead, for which we thank our top-notch design team.  What hasn’t changed is the quality of the crime fiction you’ll find in our pages. Along with your favorite authors, we ring in the New Year with four authors new to our pages: Teresa Dovalpage (“The Sandalwood Killer”), Olivia Dunnett (The Witness”), Paul Grigg (“ Mossad Rules”), and Art Taylor (“The Boy Detective and the Summer of ’74”). 

As the year ends in a string of holidays, we have a few stories to set the mood. A closing toy store is the setting for Steve Hockensmith’s holiday tale “The Last Noel”. At Christmastime, good deeds goes awry in Mark Thielman’s “The Wreck of the Edward Fitzsimmons.” And something is all wrong about a mystery writer’s double suicide in Sharon Hunt’s “Silent Night.”

As a judge and his law clerk transition from the old Tweed courthouse to the new Centre Street building in lower Manhattan in the 1920s, their relationship changes in unexpected ways in Kevin Egan’s “The Tombs Angel.” New York City is also the setting for Joseph D’Agnese’s tale featuring a mysterious radio at housewares shop in “The Detective Who Stopped by Bedford Street.” 

Farther afield, Las Vegas stylist Stacey Deshay finds herself cooped up with a bunch of B-list actors when she stumbles over a body on the set of a reality show in “Alternate Reality.” A small town police chief deals with the aftermath of his first fatal shooting in Wayne J. Gardiner’s “Mistaken Identity.” And Dr. Watson gets pulled into a mystery with international intrigue while vacation in France in “On the Banks of the Styx” by James Tipton. 

In this issue, you’ll also find a delightful mystery classic by Lillian de la Torre, “The Stroke of Thirteen,” featuring the eighteenth century writer and lexicographer Dr. Johnson, brought to our attention by Michael Mallory. 

Crime and mystery stories regularly turn on fraught and fundamental questions of trust. “Miss Starr’s Good-bye” by Leslie Budewitz features the return of Stagecoach Mary, who finds that she has won the trust of woman accused of murder. A psychology professor is entrusted with babysitting an actress as a movie wraps up production in James L. Ross’s “Last Night in Malibu.” In Janice Law’s “The Stop-In Motel,” an undocumented worker puts himself at risk to aid a stranger who has no one else to trust. And airborne half-siblings are lacking in trust as they squabble over the family beer-brewing business in Deborah Lacy’s locked-room tale, “The Sky’s the Limit.”

A Paris urchin must take care in R. T. Lawton’s “A Loaf of Bread.” In a Boer War field hospital, Dr. John Watson finds his trust in human nature shaken in James Tipton’s “The Candy Box.” A transgendered woman in Chicago is the reluctant trustee of distressing information in S. L. Franklin’s “The Seal of the Confessional.” And a social worker in western Massachusetts trusts her instincts in Susan Oleksiw’s “Just Another Runaway.”

A karate master setting up shop encounters conflict with neighborhood teens in Melissa Yi’s “Dueling Dojos.” A Vietnam vet and his girlfriend find themselves in the wrong bank at the wrong time in Peter Colt’s “The Hippie.” A “friendly” poker game in an RV camp precedes a drowning in John H. Dirckx’s procedural, “Tragedy at Daybreak.” One man’s obsessions are matched when he finds his soul mate in Dave Zeltserman’s wry “Terrible Thoughts.” Two runaways fall afoul of fate in O’Neil De Noux’s “A Meanness in Me.” On the lighter side, a holiday mix-up could have serious consequences for a young probationer in Mark Thielman’s “Thanksgiving Eve.”

Our Case File column features Gary Phillips talking about his career in graphic literature and some mid-century African American comic strips.

It’s not hard to see why travel is a recurring motif in a lot of crime fiction. Travel takes us out of the familiar to places where anything can happen. Desperados, miscreants, con artists abound: No pocket of the world is immune—and lucky for us, too, for the result can produce some pretty good tales, as this issue shows.

The motives for travel vary as much as those for crimes. Chance encounters on a business trip to Paris propel a C-list scriptwriter up a few notches in “Niall Nelson Is on My Flight” by Jim Fusilli. A Chicago couple’s drying-out trip to a New Mexico resort proves troublesome for its Native American employee in David Hagerty’s “Drinks at the El Navajo.” Marital discord sets sail on a cruise ship in Eve Fisher’s mystery “The Seven-Day Itch.” Ecuadoran P.I. Wilson Salinas takes an unexpected ride when he encounters a distraught mother and an unorthodox shaman in “Aliento del Diablo” by Tom Larsen.

The urge to distance oneself from the quotidian may be ill advised. A quick Caribbean getaway to escape the gray winter of Boston reveals the true nature of two lifelong friends’ bonds in Janice Law’s haunting tale “The Island.” And a remote estate off the coast of England is accessible only by a deadly cable car in Tom Mead’s who- and how-dunit “Incident at Widow’s Perch.”

Elsewhere in this issue: Ancient Rome is the setting of Angela Zeman’s “The Second Tale of Roxanne,” where a favored scribe of the emperor is undermined by vandals. An artist’s obsessions prick the interest—and skepticism—of the law in Emily Devenport’s “Not My Circus, But They Are My Monkeys.” High tech meets the jury trial system in in Brian Cox’s poignant “The Surrogate Initiative,” while a question of adverbs proves surprisingly consequential for two technical writers in Mysti Berry’s “Yorkshire Ripper.” And a struggling playwright confronts her devious old mentor on Brooklyn’s Promenade in Meredith Anthony’s “Eddy Gets His.”

Buried secrets percolate to the surface, plans and machinations go awry, and the perfect murder may be anything but. Just ask Charles, who’s planning to kill his wife in B. K. Stevens’s “The Tourist,” or the handsome star who finds himself in the sights of the mob in Dave Zeltserman’s “Lulu and the Heartbreaker.” Meanwhile, a Roman girl’s plot nearly upsets her sister’s betrothal in William Burton McCormick’s “The Three Camillas,” and a young boy’s recognition of a horse once stolen from his uncle inspires a plan to pay back old debts in R. T. Lawton’s Armenian trader story “The Horse.”

When an unfiled intelligence report of a congressman’s affair with a Russian agent surfaces, retired spy Charles Marley is called to investigate its provenance in “Marley’s Mistress” by John C. Boland. A journalist sniffs out some inconsistencies in an old story of a jazz musician killed defending a woman in Paul D. Marks’s “The Past is Prologue.” An archeological dig unearths more than old bones in Michael A. Black’s “Carnivores and Herbivores.” A seedy amusement park in central Florida has its own hidden depths, as one teen employee discovers in Dayle A. Dermatis’s “Pirate Pete’s.”

Eighteenth century medium Madame Selena is summoned to tony Newport, Rhode Island on the eve of the America’s Cup race, but a murder during her séance sets her on a course for the truth in “A Fine Nest of Rascals” by Janice Law. Coroner Mary Deventer and her bright, budding-detective daughter Ashley probe the truth of a popular math teacher’s suicide in “Who’s Counting?” by John H. Dirckx.

And we’re delighted to reveal our 2018 Black Orchid Novella Award winner with a publication of “Minerva James and the Goddess of Justice” by Mark Bruce.

Our summer double issue brims with examples of bad behavior badly done that will successfully delight our most discerning readers.

One of the great divides in mystery fiction is that between the professional investigator and the amateur sleuth. The interplay between vocation and avocation can unfold in any number of interesting ways, as the stories in this issue demonstrate. Whether it’s the anointed law enforcement officers whose personal passions inform their work, or the accidental sleuth whose profession sheds light on a problem, or crimes that arise from personal passions, this month’s stories reveal this complex feedback.
An NYPD data analyst’s love of trivia proves anything but trivial in Joseph S. Walker’s “Bonus Round.” Sheriff “Huck Finn” returns in Joe Helgerson’s latest humorous historical, “The Case of the Thirteenth Beard.” WWI soldiers are in no mood for a joker, but Father Kiernan offers understanding in Chris Muessig’s “Finite Jest.” And a patrolman who prides himself on his knowledge of his neighborhood bumps up against the limits of that knowledge in Mark Thielman’s “Blind Spot.”
A veterinarian visiting a Florida retirement village brings expertise in Terrie Farley Moran’s “Flamingo Bingo.” An unemployed columnist gets caught in a murder investigation in Melissa Fall’s “Photo Finished.” Colorado Rancher Katie discovers that someone has been trespassing on her land to plant marijuana and has booby-trapped the crop in Catherine Dilts’s story “Real Cowgirls Don’t Cry.”
A cowboy and his trusted horse witness a robbery in Parker Littlewood’s “Buck and Wiley Make Their Own Luck.” Gigi Vernon’s “Thick as Thieves” takes us to eighteenth-century London as pickpockets befriend a young widow. Elizabeth Zelvin’s mystery-writing heroine hones her craft at a retreat, despite the intrusion of her ex and his young bride, in “A Work in Progress.”
When an academic is murdered Steven Gore’s “Private Justice,” a detective confronts the consequences of overstepping boundaries. And in our Mystery Classic, details make up conflicting narratives in Anna Katharine Green’s story “The Thief.”

It’s that time of the year, observed by many with an exchange of gifts. We hope you’ll consider this issue a neatly wrapped package of criminous cadeaux. Variety is always welcome in a bestowal of presents, and so this issue offers a range of delights from the humorous to the spooky; from the past to the present; from the poignant to the puzzling.
Among them: the seasonally appropriate “Blue Christmas,” in which Melissa Yi’s doctor/sleuth Hope Sze is sitting down to a festive holiday dinner with coworkers when two people suddenly become deathly ill. “The Case of the Truculent Avocado” by Mark Thielman, in which a P.I. supplements his income with a colorful part-time job. Shelly Dickson Carr’s clever tale “The Beacon Hill Suicide,” showcasing historic Boston. What to do about a slobbering dog is the question for a “cleaner” in Zandra Renwick’s “Dead Man’s Dog.” And “A Six-Pipe Problem” by proceduralist John H. Dirckx.
Several tales pack an emotional punch. A grieving widower in our cover story, Pamela Blackwood’s “Justice,” hears barking and voices late at night, only later learning their significance. A new tenant in a Queens apartment house unlocks troubling memories for a lonely neighbor in Devon Shepherd’s “The Woman in Apartment 615.” Another newcomer, in “The Man Across the Hall” by Janice Law, has a destabilizing effect on a young married couple in Miami. And Chicago P.I. Kubiak steps into a family drama in Steve Lindley’s “A Matter of Trust and Surveillance.”
The uncanny and inexplicable also add zest to our holiday package. Dr. J. H. Watson recounts an episode from his time in Afghanistan, revealing what really happened at the Battle of Kandahar in James Tipton’s “Shiva’s Eye.” And our mystery classic features that master of the ghost story, E. F. Benson, with “The Confession of Charles Linkworth.”
And so, best wishes for the season. Whether you’ve been naughty or nice, maybe you’ll find a little murder tucked into your stocking for your guilty pleasure.

In our third annual Case File essay, Joseph Goodrich considers the music that puts him in the mood to murder—if only on the page. Meanwhile, a dozen thoughtful short story writers offer their own engaging meditations on a range of nefarious deeds.

An often told ghost story that no longer scare the kids still may have its uses, as Max Gersh demonstrates in “The Week Before November.” Sharon Hunt’s “The Keepers of All Sins” considers a history of death by water for the men of a wealthy family. A young couple’s canoe trip reveals the horrifying truth of their relationship in our cover story, “Leah,” by Julie Tollefson. Multiple story lines converge (literally) on a snowy day in Robert Lopresti’s “A Bad Day of Algebra Tests.” A kid escapes one bad scene only to encounter more trouble in a lonely diner in Michael Bracken’s dark tale, “Going-Away Money.” The late Albert Ashforth’s retired spy Alex Klear is once again pressed into service, this time to check on an American operative in “Death of an Oligarch.” And R. T. Lawton’s Holiday Burglars have a new scheme in “Vet’s Day.”

A flashy young mogul has a tale of losing it all—Miami style—which he tells to Elaine Viets’s P.I. pair in “Mistress of the Mickey Finn.” Mitch Alderman’s central Florida P.I. Bubba Simms brings his considerable weight to bear as he tracks down the people responsible for vandalizing a women’s health clinic in “Fear of the Secular.” Across the globe in Beijing, Martin Limón’s Korean American P.I. Il Yong lands in a Beijing jail for a crime he didn’t commit, but his ticket out comes at a heavy price in “Bite of the Dragon.” The evidence wasn’t adding up in S. L. Franklin’s “Manitoba Postmortem,” so the Carr family detectives cross the border into Canada to get the real story. Susan Thibadeau’s amateur detectives, Pittsburgh attorney Harry Whiteside and his under-employed actor/cousin Jake, find their beloved housekeeper under suspicion of murder when she inherits a bookstore, and a feisty cat.

Old songs notwithstanding, we are not, strictly speaking, required to always hurt the ones we love—but as this issue demonstrates, things often work out that way.

In R.T. Lawton’s “The Chinese Box,” for instance, the city-bred and educated son of a Shan Army warlord finds himself in competition with his own older half-brother, while two actors who once played brothers on a hit TV show have a very different off-screen dynamic in Brendon DuBois’s “The Wildest One.” Ecuadoran P.I. Wilson Salinas, meanwhile, must retrieve his neighbor’s granddaughter—snatched by her own father in “En Agua Caliente.” A prison kitchen cook is tested when the man who killed her father demands that she help him escape in Janice Law’s “Good Girl.” And a family inheritance is at stake in our Mystery Classic, “Betrayed by a Buckle” by Louisa May Alcott, introduced by Marianne Wilski Strong.

Conventioneers extraordinaire Spade and Paladin see their family of SF fans and writers divided by a bitter schism with criminal consequences in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s “Unity Con.” A mob family’s brutal management of a co-op inspires two retired seniors to act in “Rats” by Tom Savage. And, new to our pages, Matthew Wilson brings a tale of an army sergeant confronting racism among his brothers-in-arms at a training base in Germany in “The Cook Off.”

A man who once looked for unexploded WWII ordnance in Europe must confront his own past when he encounters an old lover in Mark Thielman’s atmospheric “Buried Past.” Loren D. Estleman’s Four Horseman return with a case involving a patriotic “Scrap Drive.” Feuding neighbors bring color and headaches to Detective Sergeant Fritz Dollinger’s investigation in John H. Dirckx’s procedural 
History repeats itself in Dennis McFadden’s dual coming-of-age story, “Coolbrook Twp.” And a bad actor gets a shot at auditioning for a psychological thriller in this month’s cover story, James Lincoln Warren’s “Casting Call.” 

These stories show that blood will tell.

With its silver screen vibe, July/August AHMM is our Summer Blockbuster issue. These mysteries share important traits with the movies: the tales are vivid and visceral; clever writers direct the reader's focus; and the narratives manipulate perceptions to build drama and suspense. 
A naive scriptwriter’s desperation to break into the movies leads him to put his trust in a criminally minded mentor in Kevin Egan’s “The Movie Lover.” The Hollywood set of a gangster picture is also the venue for an act of revenge in Robert S. Levinson’s “Nine Years Later.” The success of a jewelry heist depends on the performance of its “stars” in Rebecca Cantrell’s caper “Homework.” And a poker player, a grifter, and a mobster play their parts to fix—and unfix—a boxing match in Christopher Latragna’s “A Lousy Little Grand.”
Comic book super heroes offer models of strength for a young boy in “Safe” by Meredith Frazier. The theft of a rare medieval manuscript comes with unexpected costs in Robert Mangeot’s “Book of Hours.” How valuable are an artist’s napkin sketches? Find out in Albert Ashforth’s “A Tragedy Averted.” Linda Mannheim tells a story of a couple’s struggle during South Africa’s apartheid through letters and other “Documents.” A newspaper reporter in Victorian London who extorts money from wealthy men charged with an “unnatural crime” gets a lesson in humility and humiliation in Eric Rutter’s “Hateful in the Eyes of God.”
Eve Fisher returns to her fictional Laskin, SD, where a young man slips from aspiring suitor to stalker in “Blue Moon.” David Edgerley Gates examines a fateful armed bank robbery where one of the hostages is the mother of the responding officer in “I Pray the Lord My Soul to Take.” Josh Pachter also takes on an armed robbery, this one set in a restaurant where a married couple are matching wits over dinner, in “Not My Circus.” 

Killers and thieves in our midst try to stay undetected, whether clinging to shadows or hiding in plain sight. The tales in this issue feature intrepid, if sometimes accidental, sleuths who uncover what's hidden and unmask the villains in surprising and entertaining ways.

Emily Devenport’s heroine Katie Thomas runs out of her condo in her pajamas because she knows a serial killer is stalking her, but her explanation to the police for how she knows beggars belief in “10,432 Serial Killers (in Hell)”. The late B. K. Stevens was a master craftsman of short fiction; in her story “One-Day Pass,” a ghost has one shot to reveal the truth and set things straight. Artist Tamar Gillespie brings her powers of keen observation to the painting of a portrait of three spoiled Pomeranians, which happen to belong to celebrity psychiatrists specializing in the criminal mind, in John C. Boland’s “The Three Dog Problem.” A laid-off copyeditor continues to review her former employer’s website, where she discovers some devastating information hidden in the errors in “Bothering with the Details” by Dayle A. Dermatis. Leslie Budewitz brings us a tale of Stagecoach Mary, the observant and crafty servant to the Ursaline sisters in the Montana Territory in “All God’s Sparrows.”

Many of the crime stories in our March/April issue involve movement—a chase, a hunt, an escape—and each follows its own twisty journey. Dale Berry offers a graphic story of raw ambition in “The Trail;” a young pickpocket and a grave robber team up to travel a dark path in pre-revolutionary Paris in R. T. Lawton’s “The Left Hand of Leonard;” Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg give us a tale of a grieving husband and father who seeks to atone for a tragic lapse by becoming a “Night Walker”; and a young couple on the run is fatally drawn to a roadside carnival in “Fair Game” by Max Gersh.

Martin Limón’s popular 8th Army C.I.D. agents in 1970s Korea are on the trail of American G.I.’s who beat and robbed a local cabbie and took off with his young female passenger in “High Explosive.” A Denver cabbie reverses direction when he owes the wrong people in Michael Bracken’s “The Mourning Man.” A young kid gets more adventure than he bargained for in Mario Milosovic’s coming-of-age story “The Hitchhiker’s Tale.” And a routine traffic stop is anything but in Robert Lopresti’s “Nobody Gets Killed.”

Sassy Las Vegas stylist Stacey Deshay returns with a special assignment for a comeback star only to discover that her road crew has another agenda in “Knock-Offs” by Shauna Washington. A portrait photographer’s session with a beloved pet develops a negative aspect in “Off-Off-Off Broadway” by Dara Carr. A spouse-sitting assignment gets complicated for Ecuadorian P.I. Wilson Salinas in “Los Cantantes de Karaoke” by Tom Larsen.

In Michael Black’s “Walking on Water,” a P.I. takes on a client in Witness Protection. And Tim Chapman’s one-armed P.I. struggles to remain inconspicuous as he scouts for shoplifters in “The Handy Man.”

Many and varied are the paths that lead to criminal behavior. Leave it to AHMM to steer you straight.

Crime is always somewhat unexpected—if things go as planned. It’s often the surprises that make a great mystery story.
You don’t expect a killer to show up at a holiday party, unfortunately for the revelers in Michael Nethercott’s “Sinners at Eight.” And when you’re a young bookstore clerk, you don’t expect that doing a favor will have the repercussions seen in Peter Sellers’ “Christmas Help.”
An attorney doesn’t expect to take on a murder case for a former client in “Coroners Don’t Change Faces” by S. Frederic Liss. But the unemployed nephew of a Hollywood mogul does expect to do great things as a crime fighter in James Lincoln Warren’s sendup “The Chinese Dog Mystery.”
A bum doesn’t expect to have a visitor in jail in Robert Lopresti’s “Train Tracks,” but it changes his life. While an unexpected visit from postal inspectors confirms a young Navajo boy’s suspicions in David Hagerty’s “Fair Trade.” In Marianne Wilski Strong’s “Louisa and the Lighthouse,” a beach stroll leads to the unexpected finding of a prized necklace, and the writings of Louisa May Alcott knit together the clues. In Alex C. Renwick’s “Shallow Sand,” a beachcomber finds more than he expected with a metal detector. An unexpected windfall is trouble for a woman with a gambling bug in John M. Floyd’s “Scavenger Hunt.” And a chance purchase from a sidewalk vendor unexpectedly troubles long-buried memories in Janice Law’s “The Crucial Game.”
We have two great (as expected) procedurals from John H. Dirckx (“Go for the Juggler”) and David Edgerley Gates (“A Multitude of Sins”).
Finally, this issue’s Mystery Classic is “Nebuchadnezzar” by Dorothy L. Sayers. The story was chosen by B. K. Stevens, a life-long admirer of Sayers. Sadly B. K. died before she had a chance to write the introduction, though I know she chose it in part for its humor and because it’s one of the author’s lesser-known stories.
Our tales take some unexpected turns, but you can always expect to find great crime fiction here.

As the days grow short and winter looms, lengthening evenings offer time and reason to brood over the nature of darkness. As the stories in this issue attest, a landscape of shadows offers far too many opportunities for both deception and misperception.
One navigator of the shadows is postwar Manhattan private investigator Memphis Red, who confronts shifting motives, political alliances, and even identities in L. A. Wilson Jr.’s “Harlem Nocturne.” Meanwhile, a young woman seeks the shadows trying to escape the consequences of a lapse in judgment in S. L. Franklin’s “Damsels in Distress.” The shadow of calamity leaves a western town vulnerable to a charismatic itinerant preacher in Gilbert Stack’s “Pandora’s Hoax.”
The idea of a serial killer casts its own shadow, the residents of Laskin find in Eve Fisher’s “Darkness Visible.” Neighbors in Robert S. Levinson’s “The House Across the Street” know something about serial killers too—and speaking of neighbors, a suspected witch in Kilgore, Texas beguiles her hapless neighbor in William Dylan Powell’s “The Darkness and the Light.”
Photographer Anita Ray takes up the cause of an American mathematician-turned-nun who is brutally attacked but who refuses to talk to the police in Susan Oleksiw’s “A Slight Deviation from the Mean.” And Tara Laskowski gets into the head of another woman in a brutal situation in her short-short “Hostage.”
To mitigate the darkness, mid-level coworkers wreak their own special brand of havoc in plain sight in Robert Lopresti’s “The Chair Thief,” while R. T. Lawton’s Holiday Burglars return in “Black Friday,” facing their competition.
We welcome back Carol Cail, with her tale of mysterious goings-on at a seniors’ community in “Ghost Busters.” And we welcome Anna Castle, whose first story for us is “For Want of a Book,” featuring a young Francis Bacon.

There are few better sources of drama than the family, as many of the stories in this issue illustrate. If one is well advised to keep friends close and enemies closer, then perhaps one must keep family members closest of all. 

A death in the family often provides an occasion for changes—such as for the widow in Charles Todd’s “The Trophy” who seeks solace in the countryside of southern Wales, or the woman in Jane K. Cleland’s “Night Flight to Bali,” who is suddenly freed to cash in a forged painting upon the death of her domineering mother. 

Or family ties may throw up walls that are difficult for outsiders to penetrate, such as in the investigation into possible insurance fraud involving a disabled teen and his mother in John Shepphird’s “Electric Boogaloo,” or the tangled relationships revealed by the court transcript of a case of a contested will in Eve Fisher’s “Happy Families.” 

But sometimes such ties can be powerful motivators—such as for the Muslim woman who hires Beijing P.I. Il yong to find the Uighur son she’d given up for adoption in Martin Limón’s “The Smuggler of Samarkand”—or sources of support and encouragement, such as Jack Tait finds in his formidable aunts as he tries to prevent a rush to judgment against a black tenant farmer in the Depression-era South in “How Lon Pruitt Was Found Murdered in an Open Field with no Footprints Around,” by Mike Culpepper. 

The torrid summer days are a great time to kick back and read, and our July/August issue is full of hot new fiction. From flaring tempers to the spiciest chicken wings to a world baked by global warming, the characters in this issue brave it all.

A food-truck owner with the hottest wings in town and his off-duty security guard–customer deal with some unwanted heat in Robert Mangeot’s “Let It Burn.” Jay Carey brings us another dystopian procedural set in a future Florida ravaged by global warming in “We Frequent the Moon Bar.” The heat of an office romance drives characters to make bad decisions in Cathryn Grant’s “Serious Damage.” And some minor league ball players are filling their off-hours by making an amateur film when they learn of a teammate’s drowning in Chris Muessig’s “The Making of Velveteen Dream.”

Meanwhile, a gathering of southeast Asian drug warlords proves difficult for a city-bred teen in R. T. Lawton’s “Merit Making.” A pit stop at a lonely diner puts small-town Mississippi sheriff Ray Douglas and mystery writer Jenny Parker close to the scene of a murder in John M. Floyd’s whodunit “Trail’s End.” O’Neil De Noux returns in noirish form with a story about the 1940s New Orleans PI Lucien Kaye, “The Magnolia Murders.” Joseph D’Agnese offers an unusual Sherlockian tale, with Mycroft and Mrs. Hudson facing off in “A Respectable Lady.” And a former fur trapper struggles with settled life—and a murder—in Eric Rutter’s “Blood Debt.”

We warmly welcome two authors new to our pages: Bev Vincent with a tale of an unlikely superhero in “Pain-Man,” and Susan Breen introducing novice PI Maggie Dove as she tackles her first big case in “The Countess of Warsaw.” 

Finally, Steve Liskow scores his second Black Orchid Novella Award with “Look What They’ve Done to My Song, Ma,” which once again visits the Detroit music scene for a new mystery involving that hot new band, Promise.

Our May/June issue is heavy on humor, but balanced with darker tales and topped off by several voices new to us. A perfect medley of crime.
On the lighter side is Jeff Cohen’s dad-to-be/comedy theater proprietor, who has doubts about the hospital staff in “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Girl!”; and Neil Schofield’s ex-D.I. Harry Tattersby and his side-kick, who plumb their underworld connections to break up a gang of underaged thieves in “Tattersby and the Silence of the Lumbs”; and Catherine Dilts’ scheming Granny cleans up in “Unrepentant Sinner.” A tired comedian in a Borscht-belt resort frames John C. Boland’s story “The Kubelsky Block,” featuring perceptive widow Tamar Gillespie, and even draws a few laughs.
Messing with the toughest man in Halifax, Skig Skorzeny, is dangerous, especially when his mechanic Creepy Culbertson has his back in Jas. R. Petrin’s “Money Maker.” Two commuters on the graveyard shift bond over their fondness for mystery novels in Christopher Latragna’s story “The Loneliest Night of the Week.” Detective Dollinger and Detective Lieutenant Auburn puzzle what happened to cause the death of a man found with a cryptic message in his pocket.
We welcome three newcomers this issue. SJI Holliday’s Scottish Sergeant Davie Gray, who spends his vacation investigating a murder in “Home from Home,” is featured in a trilogy of novels including Damselfly. Retired Judge Debra H. Goldstein—author of Maze in Blue and Should Have Played Poker—writes “The Night They Burned Ms. Dixie’s Place,” which takes place in Birmingham during the Civil Rights era. Los Angeles native Paul D. Marks has had a long career in film directing and writing; he is also the author of White Heat and many short stories. His story “Twelve Angry Days” recalls the old Henry Fonda film, but with a very different outcome.
In addition, Jason Half introduces one of his favorite mystery classics, “Daisy Bell” by Gladys Mitchell.

Crime is character building, at least in crime fiction, because it is characters, their dark psychologies and questionable motivations, that drive compelling stories—as the tales in this issue amply demonstrate. 

What compels a model prisoner, in Tony Richards’s “Magpie Man,” to burst out of jail just before he is to be lawfully released? What motivates a desperate woman, in Dale Berry’s graphic story “Dead Air,” to strike up a conversation with a radio DJ? Why does a detective, in Wayne J. Gardiner’s “Bygones,” return home for the funeral of his high-school adversary?

Interpersonal entanglements complicate Charles John Harper’s police procedural “The Echoes.” A man seeking invisibility is driven from the dangerous shadows in Bob Tippee’s “Underground Above Ground.” Susan Oleksiw’s “How Do You Know What You Want” is a poignant story of a teen in foster care and the woman who tries to connect with her, and Martin Limón’s P.I. Il Yong pursues a case that takes him to the remote reaches of the Himalayas, where survival may depend on the uncertain kindness of othes, in “hominid.”
 
Social institutions and conventions are questioned in Alan E. Foulds’ “Razor’s Edge” when a reporter revisits a long-ago cold case, and in Mitch Alderman’s “Bleak Future” when P.I. Bubba Simms looks into extortion among central Florida’s genteel society. An old injustice gets a fresh look in “Rough-Hewn Retribution,” Nancy Pauline Simpson’s historical set in the early twentieth century South. A homicide detective and suspect match wits in the interview room in Chris Knopf’s “A Little Cariñoso.” And a land dispute is complicated—and deadly—in Gilbert M. Stack’s British historical whodunit “Greed.”
 
Watch out, these complicated characters will steal your attention—and perhaps your sympathy.

P.I.’s and fixers, burglars and soldiers all join together in our HOLIDAY DOUBLE ISSUE to send you the best wishes of the season! We visit winter locales past and present, chilly and tropical. Michael Nethercott takes readers back to the Fifties with a new tale featuring his Connecticut sleuths Lee Plunket and Mr. O’Nelligan, while S. J. Rozan sets her new series in Manhattan’s Chinatown with matriarch Yong-Yun. Brendan DuBois revisits a facet of rural New England life—kvetching at the town dump. Jay Carey’s Police Chief Eureka Kilburn deals with crime in a time of post global warming Sarasota, and Terence Faherty has an amusing take on Philo Vance that is set in Hawaii. In addition with we have a Mystery Classic treat: a suspenseful puzzler by Hugh Pentecost featuring hotel manager Pierre Chambrun—and you won’t want to miss Marvin Lachman’s insightful introduction for modern-day readers. Happy holidays from AHMM!

Editing a magazine is all about novelty—the next issue, the new stories, the new authors. One of the nice things about a significant anniversary is the occasion to pause and reflect. As we notch our sixtieth year, we thought it would be fun to invite some other voices that have long been associated with the magazine, contributors and a few staffers, to reflect on AHMM in this month’s special feature (The Case File).
But it’s the stories and authors that are the magazine’s raison d’être, and this celebratory issue is also a fine representation of AHMM’s recent decades. We are delighted to welcome Lawrence Block back to our pages with “Whatever It Takes”; Mr. Block first published a story in AHMM in 1963. And we are also delighted to welcome Bruce Arthurs, who makes his AHMM debut this month with “Beks and the Second Note.” And in between those extremes, we have new stories from other writers who have long associations with the magazine: John C. Boland (first AHMM story in 1976); Kristine Kathryn Rusch (1989); David Edgerley Gates (1991); Kathy Lynn Emerson (2001); and Stephen Ross (2010).
I wish I had the room to list the hundreds of authors who have graced AHMM’s pages with stories that have delighted and horrified and intrigued our readers for 60 years. We are grateful to them all.

Criminals and writers often employ misdirection, as a number of this month’s stories demonstrate. In S.L. Franklin’s “A Precautionary Tale,” private eye R. J. Carr’s client is a victim of such misdirection when his snow shovel is stolen and used in a murder. In Eric Rutter’s spy story “Proof” two veteran spies reconnect following careers spent in lies and misdirection. In Diana Deverell’s “Opening Day, 1954,” a rookie policewoman must evaluate the credibility of a bomb threat received at a busy theme park. And in Stephen P. Kelner, Jr.’s “Death at the Althing,” Thorbjörn is tasked with redirecting the grievances of two bickering elders at the ancient Icelandic proto-parliament known as  the Althing.
Meanwhile, David Edgerley Gates’s fixer Mickey Counihan shows that an indirect approach is sometimes more effective in “Stone Soup.” An unhappy wife engages in the most familiar of marital misdirection in “Pisan Zapra” by Josh Pachter. And Randy Davison finds his life in need of any direction in Eve Fisher’s Laskin, South Dakota–set “Iron Chef.”
And now you need no further direction, reader, but to turn the page.

History is being made this fall with the first major-party female candidate for president of the United States, and in keeping with this moment of girl power, several of the stories in our October issue highlight women exhibiting their strength of character in a variety of ways. Strong, resourceful women strut their stuff in Susan Oleksiw’s “Variable Winds,” Janice Law’s “Votes for Women,” and Gilbert M. Stack’s “Pandora’s Bluff.” Women challenged by circumstances, bad choices, or malevolent men feature in “Breakfast with Strange” by Martin Limón, “The Book of Judges” by Kevin Egan, “Close Scrutiny” by Elaine Menge, and “Stella by Starlight” by Con Lehane.
In addition, two master storytellers, Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg, collaborate this month on “The Crack of Doom,” while William Burton McCormick chronicles “The Last Walk of Filips Finks.”
Whether damsels in distress or femme fatales or smart cookies, women of mystery always make for reading pleasure!

As social creatures, we live enmeshed in a network of responsibilities to others, be they family members, friends, or colleagues. These are bonds that crime, as many of this month’s stories attest, can severely strain. The duties of friendship press against moral boundaries for two life-long buddies in Brian Cox’s “The Frozen Fiske.” An assignment to escort a WWII hero around Detroit presents an ethical dilemma for the tough-talking vice cops The Four Horsemen in Loren D. Estleman’s “Playing the Ace.” Another kind of ethical quandary faces a psychiatrist evaluating a murder suspect in Wendy Leeds’ “First, Dig Two Graves.” A young spy poses as a bookkeeper in a postwar Austrian TB sanitarium in Eve Fisher’s “Miss West’s First Case.” And two cops probe a deadly mugging in a gentrifying Glasgow in Russel D. McLean’s atmospheric “Tout.”
We also feature two bookish mysteries this month. A Louisa May Alcott aficionado is pulled into a deadly race to locate one of the author’s manuscripts in Marianne Wilski Strong’s “Louisa and the Silver Buckle.” And our Mystery Classic reacquaints readers with the gaslight era master thief Godahl, created by Frederick Irving Anderson and introduced here by Joseph Goodrich.
As you can see, we take seriously our responsibility to deliver an issue of great reads.

Over the past sixty years, it has regularly been our pleasure to welcome new voices, writers either new to our pages or making their publishing debut. This double issue continues that legacy. Congratulations, then, to two authors appearing in print for the first time: Jason Half with “The Widow Cleans House,” and Mark Thielman with his Black Orchid Novella Award–winning “A Meter of Murder.” And welcome to three authors new to AHMM: Alan Orloff, author of “The Last Loose End;” Andrea Smith, who introduces to our readers her intrepid beauty salon proprietor Vera Ames in “Beauty Shop of Horror;” and James Nolan, who brings us a tale set in Mexico in “Shortcut to Gringo Hill.”

As it happens, the notion of legacy plays an important role in several of this issue’s tales. Our cover story, Eve Fisher’s “Great Expectations,” examines a family’s handling of a small inheritance. Attorney David Crockett, in Evan Lewis’s “Mr. Crockett and the Indians,” carries with him a rather uncomfortable legacy—the crotchety voice of his ancestor Davy. Kevin Egan’s “The Heist,” set in the New York State Supreme Court building in Manhattan, involves the cultural legacy of a Hungarian émigré. And a legacy of Mob violence drives the latest installment of Janice Law’s series featuring Madame Selina and her young helper Nip.

Regular appearances by favorite writers and characters are another aspect of the AHMM legacy, and this issue features other strong installments in familiar series. John H. Dirckx, a recidivist for nearly forty years, teams Lieutenant Cyrus Auburn and Detective Sergeant Fritz Dollinger in “Can’t Undo.” R. T. Lawton, whose four different series display an impressive range of tone, setting, and eras, this time brings us “The Great Aul,” a new tale of the Armenian and his young Nogai helper. And Terence Faherty, who first appeared in our pages in 2007, offers “Margo and the Milk Trap,” his latest entry in a WWII–era series featuring radio producer Margo Banning.

The classic loner private eye notwithstanding, crime and its investigation occur within a social context. This month’s issue includes stories featuring team detective work in Janice Law’s “A Taste of Murder” and Sarah Weinman’s “Death of a Feminist.” Ties of friendship (allegedly) motivate characters in Brendan DuBois’s “A Battlefield Reunion” and Michael Bracken’s “Chase Your Dreams.” Familial obligations and gang ties are at odds in Martin Limón’s “The King of K-Pop.” “Poor Sherm” endures the pressures of family expectations in our Mystery Classic by Ruth Chessman (whose own daughter, Jane K. Cleland, introduces the tale). Finally, love, the greatest of all social engines, drives characters to behave badly in Erica Wright’s first story for AHMM, “Patsy Cline at Harry’s Last Chance Saloon.”

It’s a threatening world outside our editorial offices, but here at AHMM, we’re glad to have our readers in our network!


Bad ideas often make for good stories. Advising your friend on her love life? Messing about with volatile chemicals? Sharing details of a wealthy client’s will? What could go wrong?

So many, many things, as the stories in our annual humor issue demonstrate. Before you issue a magical challenge to your longtime romantic rival, or abruptly cancel your Hawaiian vacation for a part in a troubled theater production, or seek to engage in collective bargaining when your profession is burglary, ask yourself, what could go wrong?

Or don’t, because the results will be that much more entertaining for the rest of us.

September/October 2020

July/August 2020

May/June 2020

March/April 2020

January/February 2020

November - December 2019

September - October 2019

July - August 2019

May - June 2019

March - April 2019

January - February 2019

November/December 2018

September/October 2018

July/August 2018

May/June 2018

March/April 2018

For over sixty years, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine has been a foremost publishers of mystery, crime, and suspense short stories. AHMM publishes mystery fiction of the broadest range and the highest quality, featuring every subgenre of mystery fiction. Stories featured in AHMM have won dozens of awards, including many Robert L. Fish awards for Best First Mystery Short Story of the year.

 Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine is home to many bestselling authors, including Martin Limon, Jane K. Cleland, Loren Estleman, Rhys Bowen, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Starting with its January/February 2017 issue, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine updated its annual subscription format to feature a total of 6 issues per year, all of them 192-page double issues. The new format allows for expanded articles and more special features, as well as greater editorial flexibility overall, and comes with no increase in the annual subscription price! 

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Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine - March - April 2019

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