With its silver screen vibe, July/August is our Summer Blockbuster issue. These mystery stories share important traits with the movies: the tales are vivid and visceral; clever writers direct the reader’s focus; and the narratives manipulate perceptions to build drama and suspense.
A young, naive scriptwriter’s desperation to break into the movies leads him to put his trust in a criminally minded mentor in Kevin Egan’s “The Movie Lover.” The Hollywood set of a gangster picture is also the venue for an act of revenge in Robert S. Levinson’s “Nine Years Later.” The success of a jewelry heist depends on the performance of its “stars” in Rebecca Cantrell’s caper “Homework.” And a poker player, a grifter, and a mobster play their parts to fix—and unfix—a boxing match in Christopher Latragna’s “A Lousy Little Grand.”
Comic book super heroes offer models of strength and action for a young boy who is the target of a murderer’s ire in “Safe” by Meredith Frazier. The theft of a rare medieval manuscript comes with unexpected costs in Robert Mangeot’s “Book of Hours.” How valuable are an artist’s napkin sketches? That’s a question that comes with a story in Albert Ashforth’s “A Tragedy Averted.” Linda Mannheim tells a story of a couple’s struggle during South Africa’s apartheid through letters and other “Documents.” A newspaper reporter in Victorian London who extorts money from wealthy men charged with an “unnatural crime” gets a lesson in humility and humiliation in Eric Rutter’s “Hateful in the Eyes of God.”
Eve Fisher returns to her fictional Laskin, South Dakota, where a young man slips from aspiring suitor to stalker in “Blue Moon.” David Edgerley Gates examines a fateful armed bank robbery where one of the hostages is the mother of the responding officer in “I Pray the Lord My Soul to Take.” Josh Pachter also takes on an armed robbery, this one set in a restaurant where a married couple are matching wits over dinner, in “Not My Circus.”
We’re pleased to present our 11th annual Black Orchid Novella Award winner: Mark Thielman’s “The Black Drop of Venus” features Captain James Cook playing the ratiocinative sleuth on board HMS Endeavour.
This issue we welcome two new authors, Rebecca Cantrell and Meredith Frazier, as we sadly say goodbye to two of our favorite authors, Robert S. Levinson and Albert Ashforth. Bob Levinson was a movie lover and a fixture in the music industry in Hollywood; he wrote with insight and sympathy about the characters in and around the industry and city. He had a knack for hearing the crazy inner voices that propelled his characters, and conveyed that in his tales. Albert Ashforth, always a quiet, friendly face in New York mystery circles, wrote about US army retired special investigator Alex Klear in stories that captured the complexity of the operative’s mind as well as the world he worked in.
Rebecca Cantrell’s historical novels featuring Hannah Vogel are set in 1930s Germany and have won multiple awards and nominations. She also writes a humorous PI series and a thriller series set in the tunnels of New York City, and she cowrites with James Rollins The Order of the Sanguines series that blends myth and history into a thriller.
Meredith Frazier’s first published story appeared in our sister publication, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
So get ready to fire up the cinema of the mind’s eye. What could be more appropriate for a magazine named after a famous film director?
Trace Evidence 