Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - January 2014

In this issue

This year’s January issue is full of the magic and whimsy of the season, as well as the dark foreboding of a long winter’s night. Leading off the issue is “Snow Angel,” a new tale by Doug Allyn featuring Detective Dylan LaCrosse that will put you face-to-face with complicated questions of backwoods justice (not to mention a body or two). Two other series continue this issue with Amy Myers’s “Murder and the Spiderbrusher,” featuring chef Auguste Didier, and Percy Spurlark Parker’s “Some Flames Never Die,” featuring P.I. Trevor “Oak Tree” Oaks.

In a well-crafted debut by Department of First Stories author Howard Halstead, we are plunged into the mind of a show-business extra who has ulterior motives on his mind (“Limelight”), and in Lisa Lepovetsky’s short-short, we experience the holiday preparations of a small town’s outsider (“Noodling”).

Marilyn Todd’s “Heaven Knows”—in which an otherworldly detective stars—will take you all the way from an English village to, well, other realms… and “Death of a Sunflower” will drop you in an Icelandic New Year’s celebration that is full of shadows. Dennis McFadden’s story “The Purloined Pigs” will have you smiling, but it’s not without sinister repercussions; the same goes for G.M. Malliet’s narrative “Home for the Holidays,” in which a retired police officer reminisces about an old colleague.

As a perfect final trimming, James Powell’s signature dark humor shines in his annual holiday tale (“Blunt Instruments”). This issue is a must-read!