The July/August 2020 EQMM has us thinking about the powers that be—the forces that are behind mystery, crime, and everyday life. Robert L. Fish Memorial Award winner E. Gabriel Flores introduces one of these forces, “Mala Suerte” (bad luck), and other characters feel the energy of bad-luck mixups in “The Scourging of Jimmy Blake” by David Dean, “Manic Monday” by Barbara Baraldi, and “Ending It All” by A.J. Wright.
Meanwhile, a young man is unlucky in his choice of part-time job in “The Death and Carnage Boy” by Steve Hockensmith, and bait-and-switch identities affect the outcome of two procedurals: “The Harder They Fall” by John Lantigua and “There Was an Old Woman . . .” by Peter Turnbull.
Sometimes a force seems like magic, but there’s something else behind the trickery, such as in “The Indian Rope Trick” by Tom Mead and two other impossible-crime tales: “The King’s Gambit” by S.A. Cosby, set in an art gallery, and “A Murder at Morehead Mews” by G.M. Malliet, a locked-room murder mystery set at an English manor house. That setting is echoed in an untraditional way in David Bridge’s haunting fiction debut “Feral Flesh.”
The natural world is a powerful entity, as we see in “The Thunderstorm” by Iris Hockaday from the Department of First Stories. And characters take on almost superherolike qualities in “The Recipe Box” by Claire Ortalda, “Mary Poppins Didn’t Have Tattoos” by Stacy Woodson, and “That Which Is True” by Jacqueline Freimor.
Love, whether it’s young lust, a marriage of comfort, or family ties proves powerful in “Midsummer’s Night” by Kevin Egan, “Of Arms and Women I Sing” by Sheila Kohler, and “Rendezvous Time” by Brendan DuBois.
And Joseph Goodrich takes us on another trip of misadventure and luck (or lack thereof) from the lecture notes of Manfred B. Lee, this time outlining the birth of Ellery Queen. We think you’ll be blown away by the force of this compelling fiction!

Spring is coming, but the March/April 2023 issue of EQMM offers some chills as well as thrills. National Book Award winner Joyce Carol Oates’s “The Phlebotomist” and Marjolein van der Gaag’s “Beneath the Surface” tap into archetypal fears; David Dean revisits a classic horror tale from the point of view of “Mrs. Hyde,” and in “The Sleeper of Coldwreath” by Tom Mead, a sceptical academic teams up with his housekeeper to investigate claims of a haunting. 

Physical chill envelopes the scene in “Snowbound,” a noir thriller by Brendan DuBois, and in the action-packed “Midnight Run” by L.S. Kunz (Department of First Stories). But for those longing for spring’s warmth, there’s “Mushrooming With Murray” by Karen Abrahamson, “The Balance of Some Things” by Sacha Bissonette, in which a vacation cabin is opened for the season, and “Drinking in the Afternoon” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, in which a health-care worker escapes the COVID-19 pandemic but encounters intrigue in the hot Southwest. 

Family ties bring things to breaking points in “Shame the Devil” by Joseph Goodrich, “The Secret Sister” by Doug Allyn, “Game Four” by Travis Kennedy (Black Mask department), and “The Eye” by Savio Pham (Department of First Stories). Several other stories stand out for the experimental manner in which they're told: “Carver [and] (Company)” by Mike McHone, in which voices in a P.I.’s head become characters in the story; “What You Know, What I Know” by Michael Kardos, in which disconnected observers stumble on bits of information that could bring down a burglary ring; “Meth” by Terena Bell, whose narrator reflects on a crime he doesn’t want to commit, and “Bad Boy” by Michael Wiley, a dark tale told in verse. 

As is traditional in our January/February issue, we celebrate Sherlock Holmes’s birthday and the Baker Street Irregulars’ annual celebration of it. Among the games afoot are “The Killing of Henry Davenport” by John Shen Yen Nee and S.J. Rozan, in which Chinese novelist Lao She and Judge Dee team up with Sherlock and Watson; a new installment in Terence Faherty’s parody series from the notebooks of Dr. Watson (“The Reigate Squires”); a Holmes on the Range tale by Steve Hockensmith (“Can the Cat Catch the Rat?”); and “The Murder of Sir Henry Baskerville” by Elizabeth Elwood, in which murder hits the stage.

Speaking of the arts, Holmes was a practitioner of music, and a couple of our stories this issue strike a tune: “There Will Be No Encore” by John H. Dirckx and “The Picardy Third” by Jacqueline Freimor. Others touch upon the visual arts, film, and screenwriting: “American Lovers” by E.A. Aymar, “American Night” by Zandra Renwick, and “It’s A Small World (After All)” by Twist Phelan.

Holmes would have been interested in the scientific findings of a character in “Errand for a Neighbor” by Bill Bassman (Department of First Stories)—and speaking of neighbors, they’re also integral to “Goodbye, Ms. Damico” by Bill Pronzini and “Dissonance” by Lou Manfredo. 

In “The Bowser Boys Are Back in Town” by Hal Charles, a mischief-making pair return to hatch a scheme, while in “The Butcherbirds of Twelfth Street” by Matt Coleman (under the Black Mask banner) something more sinister occurs. Also in the hardboiled vein is “The Soiled Dove of Shallow Hollow,” a first story by Sean McCluskey. 


In EQMM’s November/December issue, Christmas lunches at a rest-stop diner come with a side of suspicion in Charlotte Hinger’s “Lizzie Noel” and a theologian is mysteriously dead before holiday sales can earn out in Simon Brett’s “Marginalia.” A teenager’s observations at a small-town library come to a head over winter break in “Book Lovers” by Hollis Seamon, and neighbors are invested in each other’s lives in the lead-up to the holidays in “Street Versus the Stalker” by Pam Barnsley. 

The bonds we make during childhood can remain strong, as we find in the tense “Juvenility” by M.J. Soni, the touching “If I Could Walk My Brother into the Dark Woods” by Andrew Riconda, and “Magic Beans” by Meenakshi Gigi Durham, where a woman raised in an ashram reminisces. In another alternative community, a young mother finds what matters to her in Vikram Kapur’s “10.”

The surprises don’t end: We have unlikely sleuths (a reluctant groomsman in “Something Blue” by G.M. Malliet, a high school athletic-equipment manager in “Two, Four, Six, Eight” by Michael Z. Lewin, and a struggling writer in “Creative Vice” by Scott William Carter) and unlikely criminals (in the relatable “What Kind of Criminal?” by Latoya Jovena and the hilarious “The Artisan-Cheese Incident” from the Department of First Stories by Michael B. Hock). We find more seasoned investigators in “Archie Smith: International Spy” by Dave Zeltserman and “The Sunday Assassin” by John Lantigua.

It wouldn’t be the holidays without a “ghost”—there’s one to consider in the Department of First Stories’ “A Ghost for Marcy’s Garden” by W.W. Mauck—and a little magic, which we find in “The Card on the Ceiling,” a Passport to Crime tale by Awasaka Tsumao. 

A Black Mask reprint (“Take It and Like It” by Frederick Nebel), our usual columns, and two poems (Carl Robinette’s “Tightrope City” and F.R. Duplantier’s “A Roomful of Sleuths”) round out the issue. Plus you’ll find the 2022 Readers Award ballot. Don’t forget to vote!


EQMM’s September/October issue ushers in autumn with specters of all kinds. In “No Peace for the Wicked” by Martin Edwards, a dead woman hovers around the living to discover her killer. We welcome a lively skeleton to our pages with the EQMM debut of Leigh Perry’s series character Sid in “The Skeleton Rides a Horse,” set amongst fans of a TV Western. Ghosts appear within another fan community (those obsessed with the Black Dahlia), in Paul D. Marks’s “The Wraith of Bunker Hill.” John Dziuban’s “Down the Mine” (Department of First Stories) involves a haunting—or is it an hallucination? Series sleuth Santa Ezerina unravels the mystery of strange lights in the sky in “The Celta Wave Conundrum” by William Burton McCormick, and a mythical creature of the night appears in Jane Jakeman’s “The Edinburg Vampire.”
If you prefer more solid ground, you’ll enjoy “The Hideout” by Bernard Onken (Black Mask department), “Dogs in the Canyon” by Mark Harrison (Department of First Stories), and “Sound Moral Character” by Hal Charles. Being watched isn’t always bad, though, as we find in “The Light on the Lagoon” by Elizabeth Elwood.
In Art Taylor’s “We Are All Strangers Here” and Anne Swardson’s postwar tale “Uncaged,” the POV characters may have figured out the perfect murder, while in “Police Technique” by Pierre Very (Passport to Crime) the culprit only thinks he’s got everyone stumped by the seemingly impossible crime.
Despite doing good, protagonists find danger, as in Twist Phelan’s “The Kindness of Strangers,” the story of two night-clubbing teens; David Dean’s “Deconstruction,” involving construction-site graft; Joseph S. Walker’s “Cleaning Day,” about an interfering aunt; and “Publish or Perish” by Smita Harish Jain, focused on a grab for academic research.
Speaking of academics, who determines the correct pronunciation of a word? Read about a real phonetics dispute that led to murder in Dean Jobb’s column Stranger Than Fiction. 

What can we really know about reality when we’re separated from it by electronic and other barriers? That’s the question for characters in EQMM’s July/August 2022 issue. In “The Secret Sharer” by W. Edward Blain, a professor experiences the world through a virtual classroom, and in “Storm Warning” by Dana Haynes, a couple plays out an anxiety-ridden conflict in a storm cellar, hidden from the outside. In “The Shape of Australia” by Christine Poulson, a neighbor disappears—but to what realm? Is reality simply a set of statistics, as for the expat in “Quiet Pol” by Raoul Biltgen, a translation of this year’s Glauser Prize winner? And how disorienting can surroundings be during a time of war and violent dictatorship? The young movie-lovers in William Burton McCormick’s “Myrna Loy Versus the Third Reich” find out.
Rituals play a big part in building personal cosmology in Jill Vassilakos’s “The Message of Amun-Re” (set in Ancient Egypt, from the Department of First Stories), and David Dean’s haunting “The Wedding Funeral.” Families create their own universes, sometimes deceitfully, in two puzzlers by Marilyn Todd and R.T. Raichev, “Desperate House Wines” and “Sweet Death.”  Deceiving relatives also feature in the P.I. tale “Runaway” by Bill Pronzini and the twisty “Powerball” by Jack Bunker.
And how do nonhuman creatures impact human reality? Find out in “Sit. Stay. Die.” by Michael Bracken and Sandra Murphy, “Zoodunit” by Richard Helms, and “Serving Process” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.


EQMM’s May/June 2022 issue celebrates Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and the spring season with signature mystery and mayhem. In “The Manglik Curse” by Smita Harish Jain, a daughter tries to bend her parents’ marriage traditions and her astrological fate to her will; in “Phoney Friend” by Peter Turnbull, a community must come to terms with the death of three unpopular sons and the legacy of their father; in “Lucky Stars” by Readers Award winner Karen Harrington, a father’s distance puts a daughter in danger from her temporary guardian.

The challenges of motherhood are at the forefront in Sheila Kohler’s poetic “A Secret Country,” “The Investigation,” by Adrienne Celt, and “The Bridge” by Twist Phelan. And fatherhood takes center stage in “The King’s Ferret,” a historical by David Dean. 

Doug Allyn’s “Blind Baseball,” a quest story, brings in family, plus friends who are as tight as family; in “Pedro Antão’s Glasses,” a nephew speculates about his mysterious uncle’s final actions; characters in the Black Mask department’s “A Complicated History” by Daniel C. Bartlett navigate the complex tragedies of strained family relationships, and brotherly and spousal relations turn deadly in “A Philosophical Difference” by Joseph Goodrich and “The Thesaurus of Love and Death” by Sharyn Kolberg, respectively.
More straightforward motives are revealed (by classical detection) in “The Artist Will Not Be Present,” a case for P.I. Martin Wade by Libby Cudmore, “The Doctor Who Fell Into Sin” by Anne van Doorn, and “Dead Man’s Gorge” by Michael Bracken, while some truly amateur sleuths uncover a hornet’s nest in “I Believe in You” by Jeremiah K. Balko (Department of First Stories).

You’ll be outdoors this spring too, but that proves hazardous for characters in “Blue Sky” by Andrew Bourelle, “The Natural Order of Things” by Sylvia Maultash Warsh, and “Runner” by Tyler Fiecke (Department of First Stories). 

The characters of mystery fiction are often described as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. That’s true of the characters in the March/April 2022 issue of EQMM, and readers will be able to sympathize with them better than ever after the two years of extreme conditions we’ve all just endured. 

National Book Award winner Joyce Carol Oates portrays a woman’s reaction to her sister’s disappearance in the novella “33 Clues Into the Disappearance of my Sister.” The past catches up to characters in intriguingly different ways in “Justice” by Cath Staincliffe, “Tomorrow” by David Dean, and the Department of First Stories entry “Strangler Fig” by Ralph Hornbeck. We see what desperate people do when put to a sudden test in “Rising Sun” (also from the Department of First Stories) by Jameson Trahearne and “The Rendezvous” by Tim Baker—and how this can lead to extreme behavior, as in Wendy Hornsby’s post-pandemic-era “Cardigans,” Anna Scotti’s mind-bending “Schrödinger, Cat,” and Edith Maxwell’s angry-neighbor piece “Bye-Bye, Jojo.” 

Technological and social change feature in Peter Tremayne’s Shakespearean-era “Now Go We in Content,” Lou Manfredo’s 1970s police procedural “Sundown,” “Once Again” by Dave Zeltserman, set in the early days of the pandemic, and “Morbid Phenomena of the Most Varied Kind” by Mat Coward, which follows two witless youths attempting to use a politician to their advantage.

And what does it look like to experience a situation as an outsider? Find out in Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier’s “Rise,” “Russian for Beginners” by Dominique Biebau (from the Passport to Crime Department), “Another Saturday Night” by Michael Caleb Tasker, “The Footless Phantom” by Tom Mead, and “Send in the Clowns” by Paul Charles, a DCI Christy Kennedy mystery set in an exclusive historical home.

Following tradition, EQMM rings in the year in Holmesian fashion. Our January/February 2022 issue contains a new Sherlock Holmes parody from the lost manuscripts of Dr. Watson (“The Musgrave Ritual” by Terence Faherty) and another wintry addition to Steve Hockensmith’s Holmes on the Range series, set after Holmes’s presumed death at Reichenbach Falls (“Bad News”). Another beloved sleuth reappears in Josh Pachter’s “Their Last Bow,” the final tale in his Ellery Queen Puzzle Club series.
Police detectives work in creative ways in B.A. Paul’s quirky “Stone Still,” Alex Grecian’s humorous “The Scarlet Box,” and Raghu Roy’s pensive “The Policeman and the Dead” (Dept. of First Stories).
World War II is the backdrop for the events of Doug Allyn’s “The Death-Camp Angel” and Merrilee Robson’s “On the Side of the Angels,” which explore morality in a war-weary society. But it’s atmospheric natural settings that play a role in love, infidelity, and death in K.L. Abrahamson’s seaside “Paleolithic,” Bill Pronzini’s stormy “The Wind,” and Jack Fredrickson’s duneside “The Sound of Laughing.”
Passion informs our Passport to Crime entry, “The Crime” by Olavo Bilac, which explores obsession and complicity.
Nonromantic relationships can be rough too: adolescent friendships turn sour in “It’s All in the Telling” by Ariel Dodson, involving a fortuneteller’s return; “Best Served Cold” by Alice Hatcher, deals with a life-changing accident; and “Double Fly Rocket 87” (in Black Mask) sees two former high-school football stars return to their alma mater. Some do find a “True Companion,” as in Libby Cudmore’s new case of that title for Martin Wade, as well as unlikely allies in “Into Thin Air” by Karen Jobst (Dept. of First Stories) and “The Favor” by Michael Z. Lewin, set during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Don’t miss our columns, which include Sherlockian book reviews (The Jury Box), and an article about Arthur Conan Doyle’s interest in true crime in Stranger Than Fiction. Happy 2022 from EQMM!

With the November/December 2021 issue of EQMM, we close out our 80th year of continuous publication.
We are thrilled to bring readers a never-before-published Amelia Peabody tale by Elizabeth Peters (aka Barbara Mertz), “The Vengeance of Sekhmet,” and fans of the original Ellery Queen stories will find a reprint of one of the most ingenious of them, “The Broken T.”
Two authors debut in the Department of First Stories: Eleanor Gonnella (“Another Temptation”) and Barbara B. Green (“30 Ackerian Place”). A familiar name—Doug Allyn—appears in our Black Mask department, writing darker than usual in “Hit and Run,” and Sunil Mann’s Glauser Prize-winning “The Patsy” travels from Germany to the Passport to Crime Department.
We welcome back to EQMM after a hiatus Pam Barnsley with her confessional tale “What Can You Do?”, and we present for the first time two award-winning authors: William Boyle with “Jianjun Ling and the Sad Case of Sonny La Grassa” and Bruce McAllister with “1952,” both of which juxtapose the earnestness of childhood with very adult crimes. Another newcomer to EQMM is Victor Kreuiter with the experimental “We’re in This Together, Aren’t We?”.
Readers will recognize repeat contributors with stories that include kidnapping (Pat Black’s “Wing Man,” Michael Wiley’s “The Best of Times,” and Scott William Carter’s “Ask Hagan”), revenge (Anna Scotti’s “The Longest Pleasure”), haunting (“Death and the Coyote” by John Lantigua), and revelation (Hal Charles’s “The Reawakening”). 
We ring in the holiday season with four tales set amidst the winter festivities: “The Disappearing Man” by Sharon Hunt, “The Smiler” by Dennis McFadden, “The Debtor” by C.H. Hung, and “Number 10 Marlborough Place” by Elizabeth Elwood. 

In keeping with our founding editor’s mission to represent the expanse of mystery fiction and showcase literary quality, EQMM’s 80th-anniversary issue contains a diverse mix of 17 stories, two forms of verse, a letter from the editor, and three columns.
We bring you a variety of stars, from those well known in the world of mainstream and literary fiction such as Jerome Charyn (“White Chocolate”) and Juliet Grames (“The Very Last Time”) to those who write across many genres, including Kristine Kathryn Rusch (“DNF”), Emmy Award-winning TV writer Matt Goldman (“Sixteen Lies),” MWA Grand Master Bill Pronzini (“Why Did You Do It?”), Anthony Award winner Hilary Davidson (“Weed Man”), and the U.K.’s Jane Jakeman (“Trick or Treat”). 
Several favorite series characters are here too: Julian Hall in “Non Absolvo” by David Dean, Magistrate Ovid in “The Stain of Memory” by Thomas K. Carpenter, Antonia Darcy in “To Slay a Stranger” by R.T. Raichev,” Santa Ezeriņa in “Demon in the Depths” by William Burton McCormick, and Owen Burns in the impossible-crime tale “The Celestial Thief” by Paul Halter (Passport to Crime). John F. Dobbyn’s Yukon story in verse (“Nugget”) belongs to a series that debuted in EQMM 42 years ago!
This issue’s newcomers to EQMM include Department of First Stories authors M. Zizzari (“Rage and Ruin”) and Denis Johnston (“Snail Mail”), plus Sandy Smith with the high-tension “Meals on Wheels.”
Our Black Mask department features the classic “Dig Down Deep” by Frances Beck, and in a feat of virtuosity Trey Dowell presents an espionage thriller (“The Problem With Fish Markets”) in just over two pages! 


We continue our celebration of EQMM’s eightieth year with an issue dedicated to the classical mystery. July/August 2021 is bookended by stories that take place in one of the most iconic of puzzle-story settings: see “The Locked Room Library” by Gigi Pandian and “The Body in the Bee Library” by Jon L. Breen. Other fair-play head-scratchers include “The White Star” by G.M. Malliet (set in an English manor), “Julius Katz and the Two Cousins” by Dave Zeltserman, the medical mystery “Not So Fast, Dr. Quick” by Elvie Simons, a lyrical impossible-crime case, in Passport to Crime, from Awasaka Tsumao (“Fox’s Wedding”), and the mystery of a homeless man’s disappearance, investigated by a homeless P.I. (“Sweeps Week” by Richard Helms). 

Elsewhere in the issue, suspense abounds, to varied backdrops: an operating room (“Bone Marrow Donor” by Joyce Carol Oates), a concert hall (“The Concert” by Ragnar Jónasson and Víkingur Ólaffson), a winery (“The Fraud of Dionysus” by Smita Harish Jain), a comic-book convention (“What’s Wrong With Harley Quinn?” by Barbara Allan), within a character’s very own mind (“Sycamore Acres” by Richard Dooling), a prison (“Bad Chemistry” by John G. Wimer), a dying Texas town (“The Last Man in Lafarge” by current Edgar Award nominee Joseph S. Walker), and right at home (“Next Door” by Kate Ellis).

Speaking of home and family, the theme runs strong in other of this issue’s entries, especially “Homecoming” by Janice Law, the Department of First Stories tales “When the Dust Settles” by Tehra Peace and “A Truck Full of Illegal Fireworks” by Michael Grimala, and a noir story for Black Mask by Brendan DuBois (“Family Love”). 

Our columns—The Jury Box, Blog Bytes, and Stranger Than Fiction—round it all out, the latter with an account of Victorian “detective-fever”!

The May/June issue of EQMM, part of our 80th-anniversary celebration, is dedicated to our fans—appropriately, because herein are the results of our 2020 Readers Award poll! 

Here you will join previous Readers Award winners such as Doug Allyn (“Kiss of Life”), Marilyn Todd (“Leap of Faith”), and David Dean (“Season of Night”) to explore the shadows within. See too how the dark motive of revenge can motivate in “Frank Scarso Finds His Life “ by Doug Crandell, “Satan’s Circle” by Roger Vaccaro (Department of First Stories), and “A Heaven or a Hell” by Anna Scotti. 

We’ll get your gears turning with some intriguing puzzles in “The Hidden Places” by Linda Stansberry, “The Case of the Strangled Man” by Steven Torres, “A Brief History of Local Warfare” by Libby Cudmore, and “The Unlocked Car” by Mike MacInnes (Department of First Stories). More turns (and twists) are encountered in “Strong Stomach” by Zoë Z. Dean and “Temptation Street” by Martin Edwards, and you can really take flight with a short- short by Alex Knight (“Birdman”), a Willie Cuesta story by John Lantigua (“The Cry of the Condor”), and a romantic suspense tale from Melissa Yi (“Flamingo Flamenco”).

Spend a companionable evening with series characters in Hal Charles’s “Nothing Good Happens After Midnight,” with icons from American culture in “Waiting For the Night to Fall” by Tim Baker (from our Black Mask department), and in an intimate historical moment in “The Bunker” by Herbert De Paepe (in Passport to Crime).
History is central too to The Jury Box by Steve Steinbock, focusing on historical mysteries, and Stranger Than Fiction by Dean Jobb, which, this issue, handles a notorious 1870  New York City murder.

In Blog Bytes, Kristopher Zgorski has you covered with some great blogs and audiobook sites. And finally, we have an article by scholar and fan Arthur Vidro: “EQMM Goes to College.” We thank him and all of our fans for being with us through the years!

This year’s March/April EQMM will help you ease from winter into spring in criminally entertaining style. Starting it off is the first appearance in EQMM of the iconic character Mike Hammer in a previously unpublished story by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins (“Killer’s Alley”). Things cool down in “Cold Hard Facts” by Chad Baker, “Stone Coat” by David Dean, and “A Winter Night’s Dream” by Michael Wiley, letting you while away chilly nights with a murder mystery, a fireside tale, and a “not-so- private private eye.” 

The intrigue continues: truth, justice, or the lack thereof play out in unexpected ways in “The Best Is Yet to Come” by Chris Knopf, “The Phone Message” by Robert Cummins, “Mother” by Ray Bazowski, and “Yeah, I Meant to Do That” by Mat Coward. With simple physics, things become more straightforward; see the supernatural-seeming “The Eyes of the Alcalde” by William Dylan Powell and the nostalgic “Escape Velocity” by Kevin Egan.

Fraught predicaments play out when characters are stretched thin in “The Dark Underbelly of Commerce” by Peter Turnbull, “An Eye for Detail” by Nancy Novick, and “A Bit of Bling” by Wendy Hornsby. The crises of other protagonists and even real-life people bring us around the world in “A Bucharest Arrest” by Bogdan Hrib, “The City of Light” by Josh Pachter (set during the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral), and this month’s Stranger Than Fiction entry “A Death in Provence” by Dean Jobb. Sometimes, though, the view out our own windows can present a dilemma, such as in “Black Swallowtail” by Hollis Seamon and “Pressure” by Cath Staincliffe. . . .

And finally, we arrive at the high-tension “Spring Fever” by Charlaine Harris and the holiday whodunit “Who Stole the Afikomen?”, a Passover tale by Elizabeth Zelvin. Thank you for spending the seasons with EQMM.


EQMM’s January/February 2021 issue features a dual celebration: our annual Sherlock Holmes tribute and the start of our 80th year. In honor of the latter, we present a special find, a heretofore-unpublished story by Cornell Woolrich (“The Dark Oblivion”)! Our Sherlockian fare shines, including a Holmesian Jury Box and an article by Dean Jobb on Arthur Conan Doyle’s career. In our fiction lineup we have a parody by Terence Faherty (“The Gloria Scott”), a Holmes on the Range tale (“Curious Incidents” by Steve Hockensmith), a whimsical poem by Ruth Berman (“Watson’s Plane”), and a pastiche with ominous overtones from EQMM newcomer Mike Adamson (“In the Shadow of the New”). Josh Pachter returns with another case for the Puzzle Club—and this time, there’s a Sherlockian twist (“The Five Orange Pipes”). Even our Passport to Crime tale fits the bill, as it features a sleuth known as France’s Sherlock Holmes (“The Touffard Affair” by Marcel Aymé). 

Bill Pronzini’s Quincannon and Carpenter take on a case that would have made the Great Detective proud in “Pick Up Sticks,” and we ring in the New Year with warnings from Tom Tolnay (“A Dangerous Encounter”) and Ken Linn (“Stray”). The turning of the calendar brings new things for many fictional characters—like a new course of study at a tony school in “No Legacy So Rich” by Anna Scotti, untraditional instruction in “Boo Radley College Prep” by Karen Harrington, and a new nanny in Sheila Kohler’s “The Changing Room.” But new roles can bring danger (see Nick Mamatas’s mob-related “Pink Squirrel,” Rob Osler’s “Analogue,” and Barb Goffman’s “That Poor Woman,” in which someone decides to take the law into her own hands).

Money-making ventures cause malevolent interactions in Scott Loring Sanders’s “The Lemonade Stand,” “The Two Gentlemen Guests” by Susan Dunlap, and Jeff Soloway’s court-translator drama “The Interpreter and the Killer.” 

Close out the year with EQMM’s charmingly chilling holiday issue. In our pages you’ll follow clues through the snow in “Killer Instinct” by Doug Allyn, solve a compelling Christmas Eve puzzle by firelight in Catriona McPherson’s “Mrs. Tilling’s Match,” travel through time to the holidays at a coal mine in Almuth Heuner’s Glauser Award-winning “Black Legacy,” and enjoy a Yuletide visit with Ellery Queen and the Puzzle Club in “The Adventure of the Black-and-Blue Carbuncle” by Josh Pachter.

The holidays are known as a family time, and characters navigate those ties in “My People” by Liza Cody, featuring an undercover police officer, “Good Decisions” by Edwin Hill, in which two couples navigate their desires, “The Cards You’re Dealt” by Michael Z. Lewin, featuring Sergeant LeRoy Powder, and “The Man at the Window,” a Slater and Lomond case by Pat Black. Much like unwrapping a gift, characters sometimes give more than you’d expect, such as those in “The Man From Scotland Yard Dances Salsa” by John Lantigua, a Willie Cuesta mystery, “Crumble” by Christine Poulson, set in a small English town, and “The Other Imelda” by R.T. Raichev, featuring always reluctant sleuth Antonia Darcy and her husband Major Payne.

Two entires from our Black Mask department shine like coal in a stocking: “Duel of the Aces” by Travis Kennedy and “Boomerang Dice,” a classic reprint by Stewart Stirling. Meanwhile, power dynamics shift uneasily in “The Winner” by LaToya Jovena, “Maps” by Kim Harbridge, and “The Tuesday Curse” by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg.

As you read “The Line” by Cath Staincliffe, “Words Don’t Kill” by Jehane Sharah, and “A Voice From the Dark” by Maurissa Guibord, you might find yourself reflecting on your year’s deeds (or misdeeds). Finally, we invite you to consider the stories published in EQMM this year and fill out our Readers Award ballot!

The September/October 2020 issue of EQMM brings all of the body’s senses thrillingly into play. Music evokes memory in “All Shook Down” by EQMM newcomer Libby Cudmore, “Los Colores” spark a vivid experience in a tale by Michael McGuire, “The Perfume of Peaches” by Alexandria Blaelock (from the Department of First Stories) will have you drifting into aromatic and flavorful territory, and the touch of a baby’s hand sends a couple down a dangerous road in “Baby Drop Box” by Doug Crandell. See how much power a haunting visual image holds in “The Oxford Ghosts” by Jane Jakeman and consider a more nebulous sense, intuition, in “What the Morning Never Suspected” by Anna Scotti. 

Societal and familial perceptions can drive crime too, as we see through the humorous “Dear Emily Etiquette” by Barb Goffman; the sibling-rivalry tale “The Homecoming” by Brendan DuBois; “Killer Biznez” by Zandra Renwick, featuring two hapless, law-breaking cousins; and several generations of eccentrics in “Burning Desire” by Marilyn Todd. Even stronger, at times, are the unnamed forces that pull on us, such as the tug for belonging in “Things That Follow” by Jim Allyn (from the Black Mask department) and “Round-Trip Runaways” by Department of First Stories author Violet Welles.

Other powerful feelings, such as love and loyalty, determine the action in the grifter story “Chasing Diamonds” by Joseph Walker, the remembrance-fueled P.I. case “The Last True Love” by L.A. Wilson, Jr., and the cleverly told “Terrible Ideas” by Gregory Fallis. Finally, use all your senses to the end of deduction in two traditional mysteries: “The Dashing Joker” by Ashibe Taku and the Ellery Queen pastiche “Four Words” by Dale C. Andrews.

With our usual columns, including a swashbuckling true crime piece by Dean Jobb, this issue has you covered for an intriguing, full-body experience in the comfort of your home!

What’s at stake in a crime tale depends on what characters value, and that comes clearly to light in EQMM’s suspenseful May/June 2020 issue. In Tom Tolnay’s “Rhododendron,” a couple debates what’s important in their community (to surprisingly dark results), and in “Safe” by Judy Clemens a character values the status quo over the safety of others. In “Quality Control” by Susan Dunlap, monetary gain is valued above all, while in “Borrowed Brains” by Alaric Hunt, from the Black Mask department, P.I. Clayton Guthrie puts the value of a stranger’s life over compensation. And values can change as circumstances do, as the central character in Shelly Dickson Carr’s “Nantucket Undertow” finds out.

Protagonists in Marilyn Todd’s “Beyond the Tree Line” and “House of Ash” by Benjamin Percy find importance in freedom, of a kind, while justice and financial gain are at odds in “Noble Rot” by Richard Helms and “Rassendyll’s Grave” by R.T Raichev. Elsewhere, familial loyalty is the driving force for action, as in “Shadow Lane” by David Dean and “Rage Warehouse—Ire Proof” by Toni L.P. Kelner.

We value our fantasies as well, and this is true for characters in Jim Weikart’s “The Frog” and Keith McCarthy’s “The Perfect Crime.” Meanwhile, legacy is of ultimate importance in “The End of the Line” by Katherine Hall Page and the Passport to Crime entry “Travelers’ Rest” by Michael Berg. Finally, how much characters value their work creates tension in “The Workaholic” by N.W. Barcus and “Art in Pieces” by Wynn Quon, both from the Department of First Stories.

Here at EQMM, we value our readership, and you get a voice this issue as the winners of our 2019 Readers Award are announced. You’ll also find new reading material, as our Stranger Than Fiction true crime column by Dean Jobb, formerly only available on our website, comes to the pages of the magazine. As always, EQMM gives readers the highest value in short mystery fiction!

EQMM’s spring issue has us thinking about time. A stunning novella by Joyce Carol Oates shows how we may experience distortions of time itself. Two of our featured pieces keep time in meter: “Here in Tremonia” by Karr & Wehner (from the Passport to Crime Department), an homage in song, and “Of Clues and Clerihews” by Richard Stout, several small poems. And several narrators share how they spend what might be their very last moments, in “Final Thoughts” by Susan Salzer, “A Little Help From My Friend” by John Dobbyn, and “Active Shooter” by Jack Bunker.

The puzzler “The Eleventh Commandment,” the suspenseful P.I. tale “In the War Zone of the Heart,” and the legal mystery “Kidneys” (by Paul Charles, John Lantigua, and Rebecca Cantrell, respectively) explore family dynamics, while “Ghost Cat” by Hal Charles, “Bones” by Bill Pronzini, and Ariel Dodson’s haunting first story “Ding Dong Bell” explore the lines some are willing to cross for—and against—family.

The fanciful “Auguste Didier and the Mad Hatter’s Hats” by Amy Myers and the clever “Lady Luck” by Peter Lovesey take us on travels—back in time in the former and to exotic Marrakesh in the latter.

The personal pursuits of characters lead to creative ways to make a buck—for better or for worse—in “Like a Lightning Bolt” by Dave Zeltserman, “One Too Many” by Edith Maxwell, and “Run Rosie Run” by Preston Lang. 
 
Make EQMM one of your pursuits. Take some time for stellar short crime fiction today!


Greet the season in EQMM tradition with a stocking full of stories and a celebration of Sherlock Holmes’s Twelfth Night birthday. Our January/February issue sets a yuletide tone with tales by Matthew Wilson (the timely “The Wretched Strangers”), Andrew Welsh-Huggins (“Home for the Holidays,” starring P.I. Andy Hayes), Bonnie Hearn Hill (“Feliz Navidead”), and Fei Wu (“Beijingle All the Way,” a puzzler in translation).

Terence Faherty is back with a new Holmes parody from the lost manuscripts of Dr. Watson (see “The Yellow Face”), and Josh Pachter treats us to another meeting of The Puzzle Club (“The Adventure of the Red Circles”).

Other characters—such as an insurance investigator in Kieran Shea’s “Paying It Off” and a 1970s P.I. in Marilyn Todd’s “Nights in White Satin”—encounter more than they wish for at the end of their trails, as does an observant cleaner in Christine Poulson’s “Because You’re Worth It” and an unlucky vacationgoer in Kelston Gunn Cowling’s “Mr. Majestyk,” from the Department of First Stories.

Justice is a personal endeavor in the nostalgic “Edie” by Merrilee Robson, the adventuresome “Crow’s Nest” by John M. Floyd, the gritty “Now Hiring Nasty Girlz” by Toni L.P. Kelner, and the twisty “Stroke of Luck” by Bill Pronzini.

Police detectives feature in Peter Turnbull’s “The Banks of the Ouse” and Pat Black’s “The Concrete Pillow”—in which the area nightlife holds danger—and in Mike McHone’s “A Drive-by on Chalmers Road?”, where a detective looks into the injury of her uncle, a Santa Claus moonlighter.

Speaking of family, it’s the time of year to honor them—and they certainly mix things up in “The Summer Uncle Cat Came to Stay” by Leslie Elman, “Frogman” by Mark SaFranko, “Used to Be” by Twist Phelan, and “The Dragonfly” by B.A. Paul, from the Department of First Stories.

The November/December 2019 issue of EQMM is perfect for year-end reflection. Our Black Mask reprint (“Private War” by Roger Torrey) will have you thinking about the characters’—and perhaps your own—internal conflicts and motivations, as will “The Breakfast Club” by David Dean and “The Dutchy” by Doug Allyn, in which characters plumb the depths of their understanding of the “other side” of conflicts domestic and political.

Family dynamics and personal codes of justice rule the action in “A Little Happy Hunting” by Charlaine Harris,  “Fiction Addiction” by Christine Poulson, “Fathers-in-Law” by Twist Phelan,” and “Wrangled” by Doug Crandell. But cautionary notes are supplied by “The Final Stage” by Ingrid Oonincx (Passport to Crime) and “The Beige Skirt” by Joseph Goodrich, which show where playing by your own rules can get you. 

Willie Cuesta reflects on his Cuban roots while helping a client find freedom from the past in “The Underground Man” by John Lantigua, and Nell Drury, in Amy Myers’s “Death and the Donkeys” is just looking for a day at the beach when her keen observations compel her to help solve a murder.

Characters must find their bearings in more than one sense in the twisty “The Island” by Elizabeth Zelvin and “None Of This Is On the Map” by Richie Narvaez, in which a reluctant young P.I. confronts his own losses to address a case. Loss also figures in “Three Calendars” by Angelique Fawns (a first story) and “Stray Dogs” by Matt Coleman (Black Mask department), where survivors grapple with the never-ending fallout from the murder of loved ones.

Classic motives—jealousy and suspicion—are at the heart of “The Drawings” by A.M. Porter (a first story), “The Chess Room” by Elizabeth Elwood (a locked-room mystery), and “That Which We Call Patience” by Anna Scotti (a first-in-series whodunit).

The September/October 2019 issue of EQMM—as befits a mystery magazine!—explores the concept of truth. “Lies and Other Truths” by the late Robert S. Levinson focuses on a ghostwriter, while Black Mask’s “Second Cousins” by Michael Cebula, circles around the nature of proving guilt or innocence—something that turns out to be a matter of perception in “The Squatter” by David Dean and of interpretation in “How Will I Ever Use This?” by the Department of First Stories’s Tim Burke.

Truth from the past is uncovered in “Red Mist” by Peter Turnbull (a Hennessey and Yellich story), “The Visit” by Kevin Egan (with echoes of World War II), Josh Pachter’s Icelandic tale “The Secret Lagoon,” and William Burton McCormick’s “The Dunes of Saulkrasti” (with series sleuth Santa Ezerina).

Sometimes the truth of our past emerges in our current life, as find the narrators of the poetic “Figs” by James Sallis and the haunting “Never Have I Ever” by Anna Scotti.

It’s hard to keep unsavory truths hidden in a neighborhood, and dark ones emerge in “Do It Yourself” by Bill Pronzini, “You Can Scream in the Everglades” by William Hallstead, and “Frontier Days” by Bill Pippin.

Speaking of neighborhoods, we visit some tony ones in “Retirement Plan” by EQMM Readers Award winner Stacy Woodson and “Julius Katz and the Belvedere Club” by Dave Zeltserman, and some unusual ones, such as a bullfighting ring (“Torero” by John F. Dobbyn) and a stone-age community (“School of Hard Rocks” by Marilyn Todd). Plus, we’re back in New Orleans with P.I. Lucien Caye (“Sac-a-lait Man” by O’Neil De Noux), and we challenge you to solve an impossible crime by Dutch writer Anne van Doorn (“The Poet Who Locked Himself In”).

In “Bare Ruined Choirs” by the Department of First Stories’s Webter Ford and “Dog Tired” by Cath Staincliffe, small irritations blossom into full-blown motives for murder.

EQMM’s July/August issue takes the subgenre of workplace mysteries to whole new realms, with tales surrounding wind-energy consultants (“New Energy” by Vicki Weisfeld), a nineteenth-century thief-taker (“The Cripplegate Apprehension” by Richard Helms), an oyster farmer in a gentrifying neighborhood (“Oystermen” by Michael Bracken), and embalmers—of sorts (“Day of the Jackal” by Marilyn Todd). In the Passport to Crime Department, we even meet a ventriloquist and other members of a circus troupe (see Takemaru Abiko’s impossible-crime tale “A Smart Dummy in the Tent”). A couple of stories feature workers from behind the desk in hotels or motels, the intriguing but melancholy “Do Not Disturb” by Steve Hockensmith, and the shadowy and riveting “The Long-Term Tenant” by Tara Laskowski (a Black Mask story). The pragmatic narrator in Aoife Clifford’s “Crossing Bridges,” too, is brought into a tough situation at her retail gig, but she secretly suspects someone else.

Of course, many characters are more interested in their extracurricular activities, like the writers in “Murderers’ Row” by Chris Holm, the barista in “Rionach, My Queen” by James Hadley Griffin (a First story), the Latvian jewelry expert in V. S. Kemanis’s “Dzintra’s Tale,” and the do-it-yourselfer in “Left for Dead” by S. J. Rozan.

Family secrets and other deceptions can complicate a job, as they do in Brendan DuBois’s “Her Sister’s Secrets,” in Tony Fisher’s twisty “Tingo” (from the Department of First Stories), in R.T. Raichev’s new Antonia Darcy mystery involving a cosmetic surgeon, “The Mysterious Affair at Osiris House,” and in “There Are Just Some Things a Rat Won’t Do,” a Hennessey and Yellich procedural by Peter Turnbull.

Some characters probably won’t be making it in to work at all, as in the harrowing “Heat” by Trey Dowell and the stunner “Rude Awakening” by Twist Phelan. Don’t miss this issue, perfect for lunch-break reading!

In EQMM’s May/June 2019 issue, sunny shores contain dark secrets, as in Edgar Award nominated Art Taylor’s “Better Days” and the edge-of-your-seat ride “Hurricane Jonah” by T.J. MacGregor. Speaking of sunshine, join Pat Black’s policemen on a bittersweet day, “The First Day of the School Holidays”—and a private investigator in Mark Stevens’s “A Bitter Thing,” a story taking place in the world of hit rock musicians. 

Classical-mystery fans will love the impossible-crime tale “Murder With a Flick of the Wrist” by William Burton McCormick and Carlos Orsi’s locked-room puzzle “Hatred in the House of Prayer.” Ellery Queen fans will delight in the return of The Puzzle Club in Josh Pachter’s pastiche “A Study in Scarlett!” 

Several authors take a look at childhood: Anna Scotti in “From Deep Within the Earth, She Smiled” and Marilyn Todd in “Boys Will Be Boys” explore the temperaments of young men, while Sheila Kohler’s “The Darling” looks back on trauma and a family secret. Janice Law’s “My Companion” follows a lonely kid looking for friendship. Other stories explore different family dynamics (see “The Shrew” by Bill Pronzini and Dave Zeltserman’s “Brother’s Keeper” [Black Mask]).

Battles of the past wage on for a soldier in “A Question of Rabbits” by J.L. Orchard (Department of First Stories), a doomed activist in Adrian J. McKinty’s “From Hell,” and characters in the twisty tales “The Duelist,” a historical by David Dean, and “The Workout,” a noirish thriller by Brendan DuBois.

Also not to miss are Chad Baker’s wry “The Smoking Bandit of Lakeside Terrace,” where a miffed tenant in an assisted-living facility sleuths; a haunting bedtime story by Jyotirmoyee Devi Sen translated from the Bengali (“The Queen and the Concubine”); the satirical “The Girl on the Bandwagon” by Martin Edwards (a sly take on psychological suspense); a poem by James Sallis (“Dear Interrogator”), and the results of our 2018 Readers Award contest!

EQMM’s March/April 2019 issue opens with “The Women Friends,” a powerful tale of friendship disrupted by terrorism, by Joyce Carol Oates. “Missing” women are at the heart of other stories, including a case for a rookie detective by R.J. Koreto (“The Girl on the Roof”) and another for a female police lieutenant by Carolyn Hart (“All Kinds of Fear”).

New and experienced officers clash in Bill Pronzini’s “Bug”—but this time it’s in a fire department investigating arson. Hell itself, though not its flames, is evoked in “The Helm of Hades,” a truly diabolical locked-room mystery by Paul Halter from our Passport to Crime department.

Unexpected allies—criminal and not—feature in the Department of First Stories’ striking “Call Me Chuckles” by Mark Cowgill and the Black Mask Department’s adventurous “The Road from Manzanar” by Harley Mazuk, while clues come from surprising places in Liza Cody’s compelling, character-driven “Life and Death in T-Shirts.” 

Seemingly quiet lives take on sinister tones in “Papa’s Snowshoes” by Tom Tolnay, “Tom of Tinsley” by Peter Turnbull, and “Closing Doors” by Peter Sellers. Speaking of tones, a hard-rock life leads to danger for the band in Doug Allyn’s “The Girls in the Fourth Row,” and darkness also seeps onto the theater stage (in Lucy Ribchester’s “Mortal Thoughts”), the page (in John Lantigua’s new Willie Cuesta story about a famous writer, “Revenge of the Puma”), and the screen (in both Paul D. Marks’s Howard Hamm sequel “Fade Out on Bunker Hill” and the late Robert S. Levinson’s “All About Evie”). 
On a different kind of screen, a character attempts to keep up the façade that funds her lifestyle in “A Perfect Life” by Sophia Huneycutt (Department of First Stories). Similar pressure to uphold a certain veneer creates trouble for the characters in “Aunt Jenna Was a Spy” by Susan Dunlap and in the issue’s concluding nail-biter, “Spray” by Michael Wiley. Don’t miss a suspenseful moment!


As has become traditional, EQMM’s January/February 2019 issue celebrates the winter holidays as well as Sherlock Holmes. We think you’ll find plenty of mischief here to get you through Christmas, the new year, and Holmes’s Twelfth Night birthday, starting with a new Amlingmeyer Brothers puzzler from Steve Hockensmith (“My Christmas Story”) that fits squarely into both of our themes and, immediately following, a tense Christmas Eve thriller from Iceland’s Ragnar Jónasson (“Don’t Panic”). What is Christmas like for someone unhappy at their job, or a semiloner invested in someone else’s holiday? Find out in the darkly humorous “Dead People’s Clothes” by Hollis Seamon and the moving “Wishing Tree” by Michael Bracken.

Of course, some of our offerings may make you feel more wary than bright—like O’Neil De Noux’s complicated postwar romance “The Pain” and A.J. Wright’s intense “Grace.” Not to worry: Your heart will beat fast enough to warm you through chilly reading about winter storms in the twisty “Snow Job” by Lia Matera and “The Father of the Corpse,” a Department of First Stories tale by Cecilia Fulton.

Crimes unfold from varying points of view in “Sideways Breakfast” by Brendan DuBois and “Entries and Exits” by Simon Brett . . . but where does the truth lie? We wonder about witnesses at the slippery “Shanty Falls” (by Doug Crandell) and through “Whiteout” (by G.M. Malliet) conditions at a series of ski lodges, and we get close—but not quite cozy—with narrators of different types in “Shall I Be Murder?” by Mat Coward and “Poof” by Batya Swift Yasgur.

While others revisit Holmes, someone in Passport to Crime has revised one of the most famous of all Christmas tales over and over (“Enough Is Enough” by Thomas Kastura) . . . and speaking of not being able to let things go, see Robert Lopresti’s short “Please Do Not Disturb.”


EQMM’s November/December issue showcases three P.I. teams: 1890s San Francisco’s Carpenter and Quincannon (in “Smoke Screen” by Bill Pronzini), Julius Katz and Archie (in “Archie for Hire” by Dave Zeltserman, wherein Archie sets out his own shingle), and Jason Stafford and his unique, youthful helpmate in the financial-crimes murder mystery “The Honest End of Sybil Cooper” by Michael Sears. A police duo—Auburn and Dollinger—tackles converging cases in John H. Dirckx’s “Where the Red Lines Meet”

Young folks are inadvertently involved in crimes in O.A.Tynan’s chilling “Jenny’s Necklace,” Anna Scotti’s haunting “Krikon the Ghoul Hunter,” and Reed Johnson’s timely and touching “Open House.”

On the home front, Barb Goffman serves up an unnerving Thanksgiving feast for her con man in “Bug Appétit,” while Marilyn Todd’s reverend’s wife meets with a final ironic twist in “Long Slow Dance Through the Passage of Time.”

Past deeds and the need to reconcile one’s own actions feature in both Department of First Stories tales, “The Screening,” by Australian Jehane Sharah, and “Duty, Honor, Hammett,” by Stacy Woodson (the latter set in Arlington Cemetery). Similarly, central characters in “Race to Judgment” by Craig Faustus Buck and “Take Care, Love” by Jean-Paul Mourlevat (a rising politician and a student, respectively) find themselves reflecting on their private notions of justice.

“Lake Desolation” by Dennis McFadden, “Human Resources” by David Dean, and “A House in the Country” by Susan Dunlap all put the phrase “wrong place/wrong time” to the test. What will McFadden’s young couple, Dean’s lazy employee, and Dunlap’s housewife do when faced with crimes of circumstance?

Peter Lovesey’s “Agony Column,” proves relevant to mystery fans in an unexpected way. And one more investigator you might recognize returns: Josh Pachter brings us a special story, “50,” on the 50th anniversary of his first publication in EQMM.

The Readers Award ballot is in this issue. Please vote!

As summer tapers off, EQMM adds to the coming chill with its September/October 2018 issue. Darkness emerges in the brightest of vacation locales in the suspenseful “Maui: The Road to Hana” by G.M. Malliet and “Playground of the Rich” by Jennifer Soosar. On other trips, unnerving storms arrive while characters navigate their own murky natures (see “Sometimes You Have to Climb a Mountain” by Tom Tolnay and “Window to the Soul” by Scott Loring Sanders), while in the Department of First Stories, events take a wild turn in a run-down hotel (“Palmetto Springs” by Jeremy Herbert). 

At home, crime may lurk just beyond an apartment’s walls, as investigators discover in “Rizzo’s Gun Moll” by Lou Manfredo and “The Case of the Smoking Knife” by Paul Charles, and even the most humdrum of daily commutes brings danger in the Passport to Crime department (“End of the Line” by De Paepe and Depuydt).

Meanwhile, things aren’t what they seem in twisty narratives by Marilyn Todd (“First Dates Are Always the Tricky Ones”), Sharon Hunt (“Promises to Keep”), and Nancy Novick (the Department of First Stories’ “How Does He Die This Time?”). 

In a redemptive tone, familiar heroes strive for justice in a new Dylan Lacrosse story from Doug Allyn (“Defender of the Dead”), a case for the mother of Lydia Chin by S.J. Rozan (“Chin Yong-Yun Helps a Fool”), an Auguste Didier whodunit by Amy Myers (“Murder in Aladdin’s Cave), a challenge for spy Finn Teller by Twist Phelan (“Game”), a P.I. Willie Cuesta case by John Lantigua (“The Cuban Prisoner”), and a Pat Gallegher New Orleans tale by Richard Helms (“The Man With Two Grins”).

Readers also won’t want to miss “The Big Run,” a new collaboration by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins, or “For the Memoir,” by the late award-winning Robert S. Levinson. Blog Bytes, The Jury Box, and a preview of the October and November Stranger Than Fiction columns round out this haunting fall issue.

As fans of crime fiction, we love to wonder: What rules dictate human behavior, making some people stay in line and leading others to commit crimes? Several authors explore that mystery in EQMM’s July/August issue. Characters follow (or don’t) the bylaws of a retirement community in Timothy O’Leary’s “Made Men”; the code of organized crime, with its own concept of “staying in line,” is probed in David Dean’s “The Mercy of Thaddeus Burke”; the sway of superstition is examined in a new Billy Raskolnikov case by William Dylan Powell, “Curse of the White Armadillo”; and religious doctrine helps to create a dangerous character in the tense “Mahadevi” by Jane Haddam.
The institution of marriage forms a backdrop to eerie and deadly happenings in “The Pale Eyes of Winter” by Jane Jakeman, “Proof” by François Bloemhof (Passport to Crime), and “Last Call” by Gemma Clarke (Department of First Stories). And in three turning-point tales, it’s the fundamental beliefs of favorite series characters that are challenged: “Officer Down” by John H. Dirckx, featuring Detectives Auburn and Dollinger, “Classic Betrayal” by Amy Myers, featuring classic-car expert Jack Colby, and “The Lightness of Man” by Thomas K. Carpenter, featuring Ancient Roman Magistrate Ovid.
The halls of academia challenge accepted norms in less than scholarly ways in the “The Professor” by Janice Law, “English 398: Fiction Workshop” by Art Taylor, and the Black Mask Department’s “Hidden in Shadow” by Alaric Hunt. But it’s the laws that govern the fringes of society that come into play in the on-the-road story “Edgewise” by Louisa Luna and the pensive “Hotel Story” by Sigrid Nunez. 
Highlights of this summer issue also include a new Nero Wolfe pastiche (“Post No Bulls” by Marvin Kaye), the latest Yorkshire police procedural by Edgar Award winner Peter Turnbull (“The Lost Contents”), and a wickedly twisty tale by 2018 Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster, Peter Lovesey (“Angela’s Alterations”).

EQMM’s May/June issue opens with a powerful Valhalla story by eleven-time Readers Award winner Doug Allyn (“Big Blue Marble”), and we’re delighted to present, among the issue’s other varied selections, five puzzle mysteries. In Passport to Crime, a contemporary master of the classical mystery, Paul Halter, works his magic in a plot involving a string of arsons (“The Fires of Hell”). The Department of First Stories contains two whodunits: Sherry Lalonde’s tale of theft in a botanical garden (“Garden-Variety Criminal”) and Maaja Wentz’s story of murder in a pitch-dark restaurant (“Inside of a Dog”). For locked room fans there’s Carlos Orsi’s “The Glass Floor,” and R.T. Raichev’s Antonia Darcy fans are sure to enjoy “A Chronicle of Deaths Foretold.”

With colleges soon to let out, two stories remind us of the mischief summer jobs can lead to: Peter Sellers’s “The Cooler” and Steve Hockensmith’s “Where the Strange Ones Go.” Atmosphere is key in Benjamin Percy’s intriguing “Suspect Zero,” in which a body journeys atop a freight-train car, and in Tim Baker’s Black Mask entry “Fatal Fog,” in which death stalks the Italian countryside. Two short shorts, Susan Dunlap’s “A Day at the Beach” and William Hallstead’s “Booked,” feature cunning cops, and a P.I. and crook match wits in Richard Helms’s “The King of Gonna.”

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Starting with its January/February 2017 issue, Ellery Queen’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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Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - July/August 2020

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