Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine - July/August 2024

In this issue

Readers get a lot of pleasure encountering old friends, series characters that they’ve met before. AHMM is always pleased to welcome such recidivists, and many writers have taken the opportunity to introduce new characters in these pages who have gone on to great acclaim. In fact, our Black Orchid Novella Award winner, Libby Cudmore, already has further plans for the private eye duo she introduces in “Alibi in Ice.” You’ll find more familiar faces, as well as some standout stand-alones, in this issue.
Marcelle Dubé revisits retired Chief Superintendent Estelle Martin, now a volunteer at a homeless shelter in the Yukon, who finds herself involved in a missing person case in “Chuck Berry Is Missing.” Math teacher Pete Barrow augments his salary by conducting private investigations, so it’s natural that the Potomac County sheriff would call him for help when a found child claims to be from the early 1960s in “Time Lies” by Ken Linn.
Tom Larsen introduced Ecuadorian P.I. Wilson Salinas to our readers in 2017, and he returns here in “El Abuelo Descarrido” (The Wayward Grandfather), taking a case for a wealthy client, only to learn that he himself is being set up to take the blame for a murder. John H. Dirckx has been publishing top-notch procedurals in our pages for more than forty years; this time around his team of crime solvers tackles the murder of a corporate spy in “Missing Links.”
But not everyone is a repeat offender (at least not yet), and we are delighted to welcome in this issue three writers new to our pages: in Steven Sheil’s “The Art of Cruel Embroidery” the tailor to a country music star lends his craft and encouragement to a new voice; in Vicki Weisfeld’s “Among the Long Shadows,” a young reporter encounters a dead body in a new museum exhibit; and in Irette Y. Patterson’s “Safe at Home,” a friendship is rekindled with home baked goodies.