A classic trope of the private-eye story is the seemingly straightforward investigation that takes an unexpected turn. This month’s issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine features two fine examples with “Heathen Springs” by James L. Ross and our cover story “Lovers and Thieves” by Charles John Harper, in which kidnapping and adultery lead to unexpected places.
Speaking of unexpected, you’ll be surprised at the behavior of a monsignor after he’s beaned by a baseball in “Play Ball” by Jim Fusilli. A young wife finds her life’s disappointments measured in broken glasses in B. K. Stevens’s “The Last Blue Glass.” And our issue is rounded out with two police procedurals: David Edgerley Gates’s “The Kneeling Nun” is set among white supremacist gangs in New Mexico; and Jay Carey’s Detective Eureka Kilburn investigates an uptick in guns in a dystopian, post–global warming Florida in “We Walk On Top of Guns.”
Trace Evidence 