Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine - November/December 2021

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Publishing is a long game. From a story’s conception to its acceptance to the day the magazine hits newsstands can take months, not to mention the collaboration of many people. Fiction, too, is a long game: A good story keeps the reader guessing until the end, but the satisfaction of the payoff may linger in the reader’s mind for years. At AHMM, we’ve been playing the long game for six and a half decades. December marks the anniversary of our first publication. We’ve striven over that time to keep readers entertained with stories that pack a punch. Along the way, we’ve introduced many new authors and published new material from established favorites. New here are Ellen Tremiti, whose detective contemplates new media and new life stages in “The Influencer”; and Edith Maxwell, no stranger to publishing, but here with her first AHMM story, “An Excellent Team,” in which she introduces two spunky young ladies in 1919. W. H. Cameron returns for his sophomore appearance with “Christmas Spirit,” a tale of death and survival. This issue also shines a new light on some familiar characters. Dr. Watson undertakes a case of his own (without his friend Holmes) in James G. Tipton’s “The Curse of Edwin Grange.” Tom Larsen’s “Oro de Tontos” reintroduces Ecuadoran P.I. Wilson Salinas with a story of his first case. R. T. Lawton’s young 18th century Parisian pickpocket picks up a few facts of life in “Green Eyes.” And Brendan DuBois reveals a sentimental side to a couple of hitmen in “Killers: A Story of Love in Four Acts.” The past catches up to the present in Christopher E. Long’s “The Mission,” while Mark Thielman’s parolee can’t shed his past fast enough in “Dry Bones.” An invented past haunts a tech geek in “The Trouble with Rebecca” by Larry Light. Passion for baseball leads to desperate acts in Jim Fusilli’s “LOOGY,” and a simmering desperation underlies Sharon Hunt’s tragedy “Digging Through Fog.”