Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - January/February 2020

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Greet the season in EQMM tradition with a stocking full of stories and a celebration of Sherlock Holmes’s Twelfth Night birthday. Our January/February issue sets a yuletide tone with tales by Matthew Wilson (the timely “The Wretched Strangers”), Andrew Welsh-Huggins (“Home for the Holidays,” starring P.I. Andy Hayes), Bonnie Hearn Hill (“Feliz Navidead”), and Fei Wu (“Beijingle All the Way,” a puzzler in translation).
Terence Faherty is back with a new Holmes parody from the lost manuscripts of Dr. Watson (see “The Yellow Face”), and Josh Pachter treats us to another meeting of The Puzzle Club (“The Adventure of the Red Circles”).
Other characters—such as an insurance investigator in Kieran Shea’s “Paying It Off” and a 1970s P.I. in Marilyn Todd’s “Nights in White Satin”—encounter more than they wish for at the end of their trails, as does an observant cleaner in Christine Poulson’s “Because You’re Worth It” and an unlucky vacationgoer in Kelston Gunn Cowling’s “Mr. Majestyk,” from the Department of First Stories.
Justice is a personal endeavor in the nostalgic “Edie” by Merrilee Robson, the adventuresome “Crow’s Nest” by John M. Floyd, the gritty “Now Hiring Nasty Girlz” by Toni L.P. Kelner, and the twisty “Stroke of Luck” by Bill Pronzini.
Police detectives feature in Peter Turnbull’s “The Banks of the Ouse” and Pat Black’s “The Concrete Pillow”—in which the area nightlife holds danger—and in Mike McHone’s “A Drive-by on Chalmers Road?”, where a detective looks into the injury of her uncle, a Santa Claus moonlighter.
Speaking of family, it’s the time of year to honor them—and they certainly mix things up in “The Summer Uncle Cat Came to Stay” by Leslie Elman, “Frogman” by Mark SaFranko, “Used to Be” by Twist Phelan, and “The Dragonfly” by B.A. Paul, from the Department of First Stories.