Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - November/December 2022

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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!