Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - September/October 2015

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EQMM’s fall 2015 double issue shines with award winners and nominees, and stories that span the genre. The world of show business isn’t just glitz and glamour in current Shamus and Thriller Award nominee Richard Helms’s witty “Shooting Stars,” which sees the return of Detective Amboy Boatright and psychic Bowie Crapster, or in 2014 Readers Award winner Doug Allyn’s powerful “The Comeback.” Trouble travels through time in other stories: to the 1960s in David Dean’s nostalgic “Happy Valley,” to the era of ancient Greek myths in Marilyn Todd’s clever “Petrified,” and into the future in Elle Wild’s surprising “Playing Dead,” from the Department of First Stories.

The home front isn’t safe either, as you’ll see in “Wedding Day” by Bill Pronzini, “Why Alice Jumped” by Dandi Daley Mackall, “The Chair” by Nancy Pickard, and “The Greenhouse Effect” by current Thriller Award nominee Tim L. Williams. Puzzles are there for the figuring in both an American national park (in “Where the Buffalo Roam” by Gerald Elias) and in the fictional San Sebastiano (in “The Poet’s Stew Pot” by James Powell, the 2015 recipient of the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer for Lifetime Achievement). Characters lust over the shining title objects in “Sugar Vat” by Elaine Menge and “Jaguar, 385 hp, Blood Red” by Tom Tolnay, with unexpected results.

Loren D. Estleman and Robert S. Levinson employ unusual narrative voices in “You Owe Me” and “Here’s What Happened,” respectively. And two tales of cross-border smuggling really kick up the issue’s suspense: Passport to Crime author Michael Berg’s “The Last Run” has the contraband delivered by hearse, while Harely Mazuk’s sprawling Black Mask P.I. tale involves air and train journeys that will have you on the edge of your seat.

Last but not least, you won’t want to miss this month’s Jury Box review column, which takes a look at mystery’s Golden Age, and highlights some new books that follow in its traditions.