Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - July 2015

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The stories in July’s EQMM echo real-life issues, from guns to drugs to international tensions—and more. Leading off, Joyce Carol Oates’s suspenseful “Gun Accident: An Investigation,” explores a situation involving kids and guns and an empty house. Later, Michael Noll’s Black Mask tale “The Tank Yard” brings us into the world of suburban drug dealing, while in “The Kashmir Enigma” by Joan Richter U.S.–Russia tensions of a different era turn an innocent idyll into something darker and more mysterious.

The issue’s characters, too, come right from the pages of life: In “The Walking Path” by David Dean, we encounter an acerbic dog-walker, a suspicious down-and-out, and a shy adolescent . . . but the real enemy will surprise you. We meet mystery-fiction authors in both “The Bracelets,” a puzzler by Department of First Stories contributor D.B. Toth, and “The Killing of Captain Hastings,” a tale by Martin Edwards that touches upon the life of a writer in the digital age.

“Eight Days a Week,” a Passport to Crime story by Nicolet Steemers, appears at first to be a tale of contemporary juvenile delinquency and violence, but there’s more beneath the surface—just as there is in both William Dylan Powell’s humorous “The Seagull and the Skull,” in which a P.I. and his monkey take on a most unlikely killer, and in “A Dark Symmetry” by Howard Halstead, the story of twins and a buried case of child abuse. Don’t miss this timely, thoughtful, and intriguing issue.