Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - August 2015

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Most mysteries include a body or two, but this month’s EQMM will give you a chill against the summer’s heat. In a new Resnick tale by John Harvey, our D.I. faces the declining health of an old friend, as well as a dangerous workload that includes a child in jeopardy (“Going Down Slow”). The moral and psychological conundrums that come with determining the causes of death provide the key to two other mysteries involving cops: Tendai Huchu’s puzzling procedural “The Best Man,” set in Africa, and the contemplative “Black Rock” by Steven Gore, in which a worn-out detective takes time off to spend with his father, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s.

What can bring someone to murder . . . and what can a murder or death bring someone to do? Find out in the Passport to Crime impossible-crime tale “The Executive Who Lost His Mind” by Shimada Soji and in the psychological suspense thriller “Mr. Kill-Me” by David Dean, where compulsions run wild. Sharon Hunt probes the dark aftermath of murder further in her story of a child’s claim to have witnessed a mysterious death (“The Water Was Rising”).

Who, when, how, and why are the questions that pull readers in. But many of the fictional characters in this issue wonder too, including a woman who’s returned to her idyllic Cornish hometown to find it plagued with a spate of murders and a reporter questioning an aged and infamous parent, in “The Longboat Cove Murders” by Marilyn Todd and “Splash” by Jane Pendjiky, respectively. (The latter appears in the Department of First Stories).

What about when your job is to do the killing, and you just don’t want to? Hitman Sally is faced with this problem in William Link’s “The Goddaughter.” And adding a final bit of spice to the issue there’s Brendan DuBois’s clever “The Long Withdrawal,” which touches upon what some might do to keep on living—and profitably.