Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - March/April 2021

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This year’s March/April EQMM will help you ease from winter into spring in criminally entertaining style. Starting it off is the first appearance in EQMM of the iconic character Mike Hammer in a previously unpublished story by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins (“Killer’s Alley”). Things cool down in “Cold Hard Facts” by Chad Baker, “Stone Coat” by David Dean, and “A Winter Night’s Dream” by Michael Wiley, letting you while away chilly nights with a murder mystery, a fireside tale, and a “not-so- private private eye.”
The intrigue continues: truth, justice, or the lack thereof play out in unexpected ways in “The Best Is Yet to Come” by Chris Knopf, “The Phone Message” by Robert Cummins, “Mother” by Ray Bazowski, and “Yeah, I Meant to Do That” by Mat Coward. With simple physics, things become more straightforward; see the supernatural-seeming “The Eyes of the Alcalde” by William Dylan Powell and the nostalgic “Escape Velocity” by Kevin Egan.
Fraught predicaments play out when characters are stretched thin in “The Dark Underbelly of Commerce” by Peter Turnbull, “An Eye for Detail” by Nancy Novick, and “A Bit of Bling” by Wendy Hornsby. The crises of other protagonists and even real-life people bring us around the world in “A Bucharest Arrest” by Bogdan Hrib, “The City of Light” by Josh Pachter (set during the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral), and this month’s Stranger Than Fiction entry “A Death in Provence” by Dean Jobb. Sometimes, though, the view out our own windows can present a dilemma, such as in “Black Swallowtail” by Hollis Seamon and “Pressure” by Cath Staincliffe. . . .
And finally, we arrive at the high-tension “Spring Fever” by Charlaine Harris and the holiday whodunit “Who Stole the Afikomen?”, a Passover tale by Elizabeth Zelvin. Thank you for spending the seasons with EQMM.