Let our new double issue pull you out of the winter doldrums with its varied mix of familiar and new faces. We welcome back Doug Allyn’s Detective Dylan LaCrosse on a cold case literally dredged to the surface anew (“The Fury”) and solve a problem for S.J. Rozan’s private detectives Lydia Chin and Bill Smith with the help of Lydia’s mother (“Chin Yong-Yun Meets a Ghost”). Julius Katz and Archie are back, too, this time with a job that proves terrifying and life-changing (“Julius Katz and the Case of Exploding Wine”).

Get your heart rate up with two other stories in which lives are at stake—the action-packed “Expiry Date” by Mason Cross and a darkly humorous Peter Macklin tale by Loren D. Estleman, this month’s Black Mask entry “The Black Spot.”

It’s all about neighborhoods, and the secrets they hold, in Lucy Ribchester’s tale of WWI Edinburgh (“Digging Up Trouble”) and Meg Opperman’s venture into modern-day Tanzania (“Twilight Ladies”).

If your varietal bases haven’t been covered by all of that, this issue also inducts two new authors into the Department of First Stories—Jill D. Block with “Like It Never Happened” and Jon Matthew Farber with “Stand Your Ground,” both tackling topical subjects. There’s something for everyone, and then some, this issue—don’t miss it!

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!

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!

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.”

Spring is ahead of us, and EQMM’s March/April 2018 issue brings you the freshest new short crime and mystery fiction. Stop and smell the roses—or seasonal harvests not so sweet—with MWA Grand Master Peter Lovesey in “Reader, I Buried Them,” set in an urban monastery, and with G.M. Malliet in the surprising “Victory Garden.” Get outdoors with a cop who faces a water-bound test in Brendan DuBois’s “The Submarine of Walker Lake”; on a mountain hike that spurs an amateur to pursue his friend’s case, in Thomas Przybilka and Gitta List’s Passport to Crime tale “Rest In Peace”; and with a mother and her wayward son at a seashore resort in Susan Perry Benson’s “Rip Currents.” 

The cold wind lingers in Josh Pachter’s short-short “A Young Man’s Game,” and another contest holds sway in the finale to Chris Muessig and Steve Seder’s wrestling trilogy “One Fall to a Finish.”

Organized crime can seem impregnable, but characters find ways to combat it in “The Wedding Ring” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (about a conman and his identity-theft crew) and “Health and Safety” by Liza Cody, a thriller with a culinary twist. Watch the hierarchy of organized crime play out in “Tigers and Flies” by Cath Staincliffe and “The Avenging Angel” by John Lantigua, and match wits with a serial killer in “Bench Mark” by Marilyn Todd (featuring Ancient Rome’s Claudia Seferius).

It doesn’t get fresher than the Department of First Stories, and there Samantha Allen spins a tale of a recent widow in a struggling rural community, in “Some Kind of Lonely.” Watch a child take on an emotional case when his friend goes missing, in the harrowing “Sofee” by David Dean, and listen to a young narrator recount her exploits in Margaret Maron’s “The Last Man I Killed.”

Finally, treat yourself to “Cleopatran Cocktails” by William Burton McCormick and “Faceless Killer” by Christine Poulson, two unique stories from uncommon points of view. The March/April issue will get you ready for the season to turn—don’t miss it!

Happy New Year from EQMM! As is our winter tradition, our January/February 2018 issue is full of seasonal suspense and Sherlockian detection. Fans of Terence Faherty’s series from the lost manuscripts of Dr. John Watson will find a new tale, “The Noble Bachelor,” while amateur sleuths employ Holmes’s methods to find compelling solutions to strange problems in “Tapping the Glass” by Jane Jakeman and “The Case of the Curious Collector” by John Morgan Wilson. Police are on the case in Kate Ellis’s nuclear-plant thriller “Half-Life,” in “Burg’s Hobby Case” by Matthew Wilson, set in Cold War Germany (Department of First Stories), and, with help from the criminal underworld, in “Stick” by Doug Allyn.

The holidays can dredge up past dark deeds, and end-of-year festivities are not without financial woes and strained relationships. In “White Tights and Mary Janes,” Edwin Hill’s Department of First Stories debut, one woman tries to hold it all together, while in Elizabeth Elwood’s “Ghosts of Christmas Past” another takes us to a vacant mansion and its long-ago tragedy. Other haunting visages from Christmases past arise in “The Sofa Doll” by Barbara Cleverly.

“The Lighthouse and the Lamp” by William Dylan Powell, is a tale of improbable wishes—but be careful; in “The Final Analysis” by Luciano Sívori (Passport to Crime) and “Wake Me When It’s Over” by Robert Garner McBrearty, dark dreams threaten to come true. Larry Light’s “Dysperception” hits a cautionary note too, this one about best-laid plans.

If you yearn for warmer climes, try “Farewell Cruise” by Martin Edwards, immerse yourself in the South American discoveries of Margaret Maron’s characters in “There Are No Elephants in Peru,” follow the twists of Angela Crider Neary’s culinary mystery “Murder on Rue Royal,” conjure up dangerous caving in Mexico in Marilyn Todd’s “Killing Kevin,” or visit the West Coast where, in Robert S. Levinson’s “The Public Hero,” a P.I. is made a strange proposal by a Hollywood movie maker.

EQMM’s November/December issue wraps up an exciting year with some familiar characters: Special operative cum high-school principal Anne DeWitt returns in “Small Signs” by Charlaine Harris (whose latest TV series Midnight, Texas recently debuted on NBC); Elizabeth Zelvin’s sleuth Bruce Kohler is back in a Central Park/Strawberry Fields whodunit (“Death Will Help You Imagine”); Lou Manfredo’s Detective Rizzo takes on a case with a bit of nostalgia (“Rizzo’s Monkey Store”); writer-sleuth Antonia Darcy again stumbles upon a body in “Murder at The Mongoose” by R.T. Raichev; and detectives Hennessey and Yellich return in Peter Turnbull’s procedural “Bad Bargain Lane.” 

Jim Fusilli, in his Black Mask debut, brings us the mob story “Precision Thinking,” set in a fictionalized Hoboken, New Jersey—and rural areas are represented too, in Dominic Russ-Combs’s coming-of-age crime tale “Manglevine,” in Tim L. Williams’s riveting portrayal of a domestic crime (“Wendell and Joni and Dianne and Me”), and in John Gastineau’s suspenseful Department of First Stories entry, “A Coon Dog and Love.” Suburban life has its own dark side, as we see in Tom Tolnay’s eerie “Bogus Lives” and Penny Hancock’s twisty payback tale “The Pest.”

Stunning puzzle mysteries are provided by Frankie Y. Bailey (“The Singapore Sling Affair,” set at a community theater circa 1948) and Shimada Soji (“The Running Dead,” from Passport to Crime, which features an impossible crime).

“The Bad Guys” by Richard Chizmar and “Betrayal” by Bill Pronzini explore the hard decisions facing cops, while T. J. MacGregor’s lottery story “A Gambler’s Superstition” and the haunting “Honey, Hold Me” by Robert L. Fish Award winner Zoë Z. Dean emphasize the tensions of home and family.

Finally, don’t miss an action-packed new piece from multiple EQMM Readers Award Winner Doug Allyn (“Tombstone”)—set during the filming of a Western—or your chance to vote for the 2017 EQMM Readers Award with the enclosed ballot!

Crime is a community affair in EQMM’s September/October 2017 issue, and members of the EQMM community won’t want to miss “Bunker Hill Blues,” the next installment in Paul D. Marks’s Readers Award winning series set in L.A., or “Phantomwise: 1972,” a haunting new tale by master Joyce Carol Oates.

On a changing NYC block, in “e-Golem,” S.J. Rozan’s rare-book dealer finds a strange solution for his failing business, and Con Lehane’s undercover cop has an unexpected run-in with a woman from his Irish Bronx youth in “Come Back Paddy Reilly.” Jack Fredrickson deals with an infamous neighborhood fixture in “Crazy Margaret,” and a criminal couple wreak havoc in Brooklyn in “How She Got Even” by Peter Hochstein, featuring P.I. Rich Hovanec.

It takes a village to help some of our characters: A police officer responds to an elderly woman’s call in Richard Helms’s “Missing Person,” an unsuspecting carjacker chooses a colorful target for conveyance in Michael Wiley’s “Making It,” and mothers make binding friendships while biding their time in a hospital’s infant special-care unit in Aoife Clifford’s “A Watched Pot.” Meanwhile, an unfaithful husband is roped into helping his neighbor in Philip Lowery’s suspenseful “Fishtown Lockup” and tragedy unfolds at a civic carnival in Iris Leister’s dark Passport to Crime tale “Matti.”
 
For murder on the traditional side, enter the beachfront hamlet of Christianna Brand’s “Bank Holiday Murder,” or pass through the gates of Amsterdam’s Begijnhof in “A Woman’s Place” by Josh Pachter and Rene Appél. 

There’s enough below the surface in EQMM’s July/August issue to keep you cool all summer. A new spy story by Jeffery Deaver, “Hard to Get,” takes readers to Eastern Europe where a new American agent encounters his attractive Russian counterpart.
Later, crime has a literary link: Find what’s hidden in pages within our pages, as detective Kennedy in Paul Charles’s “Harry Potter and the Shadow of the Forger’s Throne” investigates the murder of a book collector, and Julius Katz that of a literary agent in Dave Zeltserman’s “Julius Katz and the Terminated Agent.” Then, a mystery author’s words may be mightier than the sword—or maybe not—in Graydon Miller’s “Poison Pen.” Ecclesiastical texts figure in Richard Stout’s Department of First Stories historical “Platina and the Green Children,” and Claudius Lyon invokes the Bible in “Peter and the Wolfe” by Loren D. Estleman.” Meanwhile, Dr. Twist in “The Yellow Book” by Paul Halter (Passport to Crime) unearths a text even more strange at the heart of a mystery seeming to involve the occult. And who is writing to whom in Louis Bayard’s suspenseful “Banana Triangle Six”?
We’re on the road and in Hollywood past and present in the Department of First Stories’ “The Fast and the Furriest” by Pat H. Broeske, and continue the bumpy ride through the American desert, on the lam, in Susan Koefod’s “Tonic.” English farmland and family troubles feature in Judith Cutler’s “Learning to Drive,” and a picturesque French village in Christine Poulson’s “The Egyptian Cat.” Then, take a dive into the murky waters of Dennis McFadden’s “Galway Lake” and Marilyn Todd’s “Night Crossing.”

Diverse is the word for EQMM’s May/June 2017 issue, whose stories run the thematic and atmosphere gamut of the crime and mystery field. 

In historicals by Miriam Grace Monfredo and Marilyn Todd—masters of that subgenre—we visit nineteenth-century New York state (see “Child of the Cold Moon”) and the Old West (see “China Mary”), where wrongs await righting. Speaking of wrongs: Old misdeeds are reexamined with forensic and analytic slants in M.C. Lee’s tricky “Angel Face” from the Department of First Stories and in Robert L. Fish Award winning author Zoë Z. Dean’s gritty “Charcoal and Cherry.”

In these pages you’ll find crimes committed by professionals—as in Robert S. Levinson’s mob tale “Rosalie Marx Is Missing”—and by amateurs, as in Martin Edwards’s “Lucky Liam.” An interesting relationship unfolds via e-mail in Marjorie Eccles’ “Find and Replace,” and another finds its haunting conclusion in Jonathan Moore’s “Your Name Will Be Written in Lights,” set in Hawaii.

Police investigators of very different kinds explore crimes in Barcelona (the Passport to Crime Department’s “District V” by Teresa Solana) and the Jersey Shore (“Night Class” by David Dean). Also investigating, as usual by happenstance, is mystery writer-sleuth Antonia Darcy, in R.T. Raichev’s “The Strangler at the Harrogate Hydro.”

Stunning short-shorts like Rob Brunet’s “The Last Thing You Smell” and Michele Ruby’s “Alphabetical Order” will leave you reeling, while a pair of Australian political fixers will transfix you with their efforts to quell murderous news in “Summer of the Seventeen Poll” by Aoife Clifford.

There’s a hint of the uncanny in Terence Faherty’s Star Republic mystery “Infinite Uticas” as well as in John Lantigua’s “In the Time of the Voodoo,” featuring P.I. Willie Cuesta. And for those who like their mysteries dark and dangerous, there’s Doug Allyn’s Black Mask entry, “The Belgian.” The issue also contains the winners of the 2016 Readers Award—don’t miss it!

Murder, mayhem, and mystery appear to be occupational hazards in EQMM’s March/April 2017 issue. Doctors are enlisted in the body-counting in Andrew Klavan’s post-WWI psychological thriller “All Our Yesterdays” and in Robert Shepherd’s clever “Just Below the Surface” (Department of First Stories). Environmental scientists assist in “Oh, Give Me a Home” by Gerald Elias, and an academic tackles a poisoning in G.M. Malliet’s “The Oxford Tarts.” At another table, a romantic meal is disrupted by violence in “Le Bernadin,” Alaric Hunt’s hardboiled EQMM debut.

Misbehavior has a rural setting in Carl Robinette’s “The Hard Rise,” in which a local war hero stumbles onto crime on his home turf, and in Tim L. Williams’s topical “Renters,” in which a family torn by poverty and looming eviction resorts to desperate means.
The creative arts have their own troubles, as a has-been writer unfolds in “Alive, Alive-Oh!” by O.A. Tynan and as some unusual works of art reveal in “Portrait of a Lady” by Beatrix Kramlovsky (Passport to Crime). An ex-convict/sculptor falls under suspicion in William Dylan Powell’s “The Model Citizen,” and P.I. Billy Raskolnikov and his monkey Ringo intervene.

Crime’s in the job descriptions of both P.I. Julius Katz, who returns in Dave Zeltserman’s “Cramer in Trouble,” and ancient Irish advocate Sister Fidelma, who’s seen in her student days in “The Copyist” by Peter Tremayne. Student days also factor in “Together” by Charlie Hughes, a Department of First Stories tale of obsession.

Characters in Judith Cutler’s “Ruthless” (the tale of a woman too often widowed), in Antony Mann’s “The Guy I Told Stuff To” (where loose talk has dire consequences) and in Bill Pronzini’s “The Stereotype” (featuring a teacher who has exhausted conventional tactics) explore less legitimate occupations. And the issue finishes with the short but powerful historical “The Rat” by Cath Staincliffe. Our job is to bring you excellent and varied mystery fiction, and you’ll find it here!

In this issue we celebrate both the season and Sherlock Holmes. Against a snowy scene, carolers are a concern in Vicki Weisfeld’s whodunit “A Slaying Song Tonight,” while in Barbara Nadel’s “The Twelve Days of Dunwich” a well-known carol frames the plot. You’ll watch where you do your holiday shopping after reading the clever “Slay Belles” by Marilyn Todd and the sinister “After Closing Time” by Nova Lee Maier (Passport to Crime). And a holiday issue wouldn’t be complete without a wry piece from James Powell (“Ask the Field Mice”).

We visit Baker Street with Terence Faherty—with another parody from the manuscripts of Dr. Watson (“The Engineer’s Thumb”)—and Jonathan Turner, who brings a American duo familiar to our pages, the Amlingmeyer brothers, in touch with the Great Detective himself in a tricky Department of First Stories entry (“The Adventure of the Disguised Passenger”). Amy Myers continues the trip to Victorian London with her tale “Tom Wasp and the Disappearing Philosopher,” a new case for her chimney-sweep sleuth.

Echoes of Sherlockian crime-solving sound when an eccentric man approaches a P.I. with a strange dilemma in “The Client, the Cat, the Wife, and the Autopsy” by Peter Hochstein. An animal also figures into Brendan DuBois’s “Flowing Waters,” a poignant story about a veteran.

A stockingful of weapons features in this month’s stories. See what’s uncovered in a journalist’s purse in “Agony” by Jane Jakeman; see whose is brandished first in the insightful “Glock” by Bill Pippin; and discover which prevails, flames or fists, in Kris Nelscott’s powerful “Blaming the Arsonist.” On top of the more traditional implements of mayhem, a computer wreaks havoc in “Night Terrors” by Owen Leddy, and the trappings of professional photography in “Exposure” by A.J. Wright.

This issue also showcases “The Children of Espíritu Santo” by David Dean (Black Mask) and “The Game” by M. Soni (another Department of First Stories entry).

In this final issue of EQMM’s 75th-anniversary year, December 2016, we bring to a close a celebration that has paid tribute to the magazine’s past while attempting to incorporate the ideal of quality set forth in EQMM’s very first issue with every new story brought to the page.

Unconventional crime-solvers have their day as we say goodbye to 2016: A series police officer receives help from a supposed psychic in Richard Helms’s seriocomic procedural “Bloodstained Glass”; in a new entry in Peter Tremayne’s award-winning series set in ancient Ireland, “Catspaw,” Sister Fidelma is seen in her early years as a lawyer-in-training identifying the least likely of all suspects; and a specter supervises the investigation of his own death in Paul D. Marks’s atmospheric “Ghosts of Bunker Hill.”

The suspense tightens in Sarah Weinman’s “Dream Wedding,” in which a law-enforcement agent goes deep undercover to flush out a killer at a family celebration. The complicated tensions of family continue to drive the action in  “With Eyes Like That,” the tale of an aging rock star by Robert S. Levinson, and in Tom Tolnay’s relatable “A History of Snakes,” in which a husband and wife try to revive a marriage at an Adirondack-lake retreat.

 Our Passport to Crime department and the Department of First Stories both appear, featuring, in the former, a surprising visitation (“Stranger in the Night” by Belgium’s Hilde Vandermeeren) and in the latter a sly, good-hearted member of the younger generation (“The Truth of the Moment” E. Gabriel Flores).

In From the Editor’s Desk, Janet Hutchings talks about the role she hopes the magazine will continue to play in years to come. Be a part of EQMM’s future by voting in the EQMM Readers Award, the ballot contained in this issue. Thank you for celebrating with us all year—and here’s to the next 75!

This issue, the penultimate in the 2016 celebration of our 75th anniversary, honors those who have contributed to the mystery-fiction world in areas other than fiction writing: the historians, critics, reviewers, and biographers of our field. We have work from both a former and current president of the U.K’.s Detection Club: acclaimed author and editor Simon Brett (with the wry small-village mystery “The Body in the Bookshop”) and award-winning critic Martin Edwards (with the nonfiction piece “Ellery Queen—and Enthusiasm”). Reviewer, critic, and teacher Art Taylor takes a contemplative tone in his short story “The Great Detective Reflects,” while Ulf Durling, former secretary of the Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy, revisits a puzzling old case in a short story for our Passport to Crime department (see “Windfall”).

From Our Archives comes a tale from top critic, Edgar Award winner, and former EQMM reviewer Anthony Boucher (“A Kind of Madness”); learn more about Boucher and other early critics for this magazine in “EQMM’s First Reviewers,” an article by Jon L. Breen, himself an award-winning reviewer who also takes the gavel in this issue’s The Jury Box. 

More outstanding fiction comes from cultural anthropologist Meg Opperman (see “Murder Under the Baobab,” another in her Mkama and Lubadsa series) and from Jim Allyn, who fills the Black Mask Department with his poignant tale of childhood friends, now veterans (“The Master of Negwegon).” Multiple award winner Dana Cameron provides a new case in her Anna Hoyt historical series (“An Obliging Cousin”) and Scott Loring Sanders spins a tale about new beginnings in “Frank’s Beach.” Finally, newcomer Cathy Lazere enters the Department of First Stories with the humorous yet dark “Gurus Need Not Apply.”

As Janet Hutchings urges in her From the Editor’s Desk feature, let’s salute the critics—and enjoy some first-rate fiction while we’re at it!

EQMM came into the world 75 years ago with an issue dated “Fall 1941,” and this year’s September/October issue is the one we’ve chosen to correlate to that first outing. We’ve designed these pages to examine and celebrate the magazine’s past, bring its traditions into the present, and look ahead to the years to come.
Leading the fiction lineup is a special story from our archives: Stanley Ellin’s famous 1948 fiction debut “The Specialty of the House.” This tale is an important one not only to EQMM’s history but to that of the mystery genre. We learn more about the magazine’s early years in special features by Marvin Lachman (“1941: The Year Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Was Born,” which sets the first issue’s publication in historical context) and Jeffrey Marks (“In the Beginning,” which discusses how the idea for the magazine was born, and the logistics of its startup). Settling us further into that moment is Jon L. Breen’s “A Week Without War,” a fiction puzzler that revolves around EQMM’s first issue, and even uses its pages as a clue.

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Published since 1941, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine is America's oldest and most celebrated crime-fiction publication. "The best mystery magazine in the world, bar none," states Stephen King. Featured in its pages are short stories by the world’s leading writers of suspense. The full range of the genre is covered, from the cozy to the hardboiled, the historical to the contemporary—including police procedurals, P.I. stories, psychological suspense, locked-room and impossible-crime tales, classical whodunits, and urban noir. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine is home to many bestselling authors, including Joyce Carol Oates, Chuck Hogan, Jan Burke, Lawrence Block, and Marcia Muller.

 

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!

 

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine features 6 double issues each year.

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Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - March/April 2015

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