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December 18, 2018 · 2:00 pm

Wrap Up a Mystery (January/February 2019)

It’s that time of the year, a season observed by many with an exchange of gifts. We hope you’ll consider this issue a neatly wrapped package of criminous cadeaux. Variety is always welcome in a bestowal of presents, and so this issue offers a range of delights from the humorous to the spooky; from the past to the present; from the poignant to the puzzling.

Among them: the seasonally-appropriate “Blue Christmas,” in which Melissa Yi’s doctor/sleuth Hope Sze is sitting down to a festive holiday dinner with coworkers when two people suddenly become deathly ill. “The Case of the Truculent Avocado” by Mark Thielman, in which a P.I. supplements his sporadic income with a part-time job dressing up as a potato. Shelly Dickson Carr’s clever tale “The Beacon Hill Suicide,” showcasing historic Boston. What to do about a slobbering dog is the question for a “cleaner” in Zandra Renwick’s “Dead Man’s Dog.” And “A Six-Pipe Problem” by proceduralist master John H. Dirckx.

Several tales pack a powerful emotional punch. A grieving widower in our cover story, Pamela Blackwood’s “Justice,” hears voices and barking late at night, only later learning the significance of those noises. A new tenant in a Queens apartment house unlocks troubling memories for a lonely neighbor in Devon Shepherd’s “The Woman in Apartment 615.” Another newcomer, in “The Man Across the Hall” by Janice Law, has a destabilizing effect on a young married couple in Miami. And Chicago P.I. Kubiak steps into a family drama when an old colleague from the police force asks him to follow his wife in Steve Lindley’s “A Matter of Trust and Surveillance.”

The uncanny and inexplicable also add zest to our holiday package. A pre-Sherlock Dr. J. H. Watson recounts an episode from his time in Afghanistan, revealing what really happened at the Battle of Kandahar in James Tipton’s “Shiva’s Eye.” And our mystery classic features that master of the ghost story, E. F. Benson, with “The Confession of Charles Linkworth.”

And so, best wishes for the season. Whether you’ve been naughty or nice, maybe you’ll find a little murder tucked into your stocking for your guilty pleasure.

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November 2, 2018 · 12:40 pm

Meditations on Murder (November/December 2018)

In our third annual Case File essay, Joseph Goodrich considers the music that puts him in the mood to murder—if only on the page. Meanwhile, in our November/December issue, a dozen thoughtful short story writers offer their own engaging meditations on a range of nefarious deeds.

An oft told ghost story that no longer scare the kids still may have its uses, as Max Gersh demonstrates in “The Week Before November.” Sharon Hunt’s “The Keepers of All Sins” considers a history of death by water for the men of a wealthy family. A young couple’s canoe trip reveals the horrifying truth of their relationship in our cover story, “Leah,” by Julie Tollefson. Multiple story lines converge (literally) on a snowy day in Robert Lopresti’s “A Bad Day of Algebra Tests.” A kid escapes one bad scene only to encounter more trouble in a lonely diner in Michael Bracken’s dark tale, “Going-Away Money.” The late Albert Ashforth’s retired spy Alex Klear is once again pressed into service, this time to check on an American operative in “Death of an Oligarch.” And R. T. Lawton’s Holiday Burglars have a new scheme in “Vet’s Day.”

A flashy young mogul has a tale of losing it all—Miami style—which he tells to Elaine Viets’s P.I. pair in “Mistress of the Mickey Finn.” Mitch Alderman’s central Florida P.I. Bubba Simms brings his considerable weight to bear as he tracks down the people responsible for vandalizing a women’s health clinic in “Fear of the Secular.” Across the globe in Beijing, Martin Limón’s Korean American P.I. Il Yong lands in a Beijing jail for a crime he didn’t commit, but his ticket out comes at a heavy price in “Bite of the Dragon.” The evidence wasn’t adding up in S. L. Franklin’s “Manitoba Postmortem,” so the Carr family detectives cross the border into Canada to get the real story. Susan Thibadeau’s amateur detectives, Pittsburgh attorney Harry Whiteside and his under-employed actor/cousin Jake, find their beloved housekeeper under suspicion of murder when she inherits a bookstore, and a feisty cat.

Plus brain-teaser puzzles, book reviews, and a new Mysterious Photograph contest await inside. You can also check out our blog Trace-Evidence.net for some story-behind-the-story insights. And if you’re in the mood for further reflection, you can use our annual index in this issue as a guide to all of our authors’ criminal creations. As we bring 2018 to a close, we can all reflect on what a great year it’s been for crime fiction, and for the magazines that publish the genre’s best short stories.

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September 14, 2018 · 12:01 pm

All in the Family (September/October 2018)

Old songs notwithstanding, we are not, strictly speaking, required to always hurt the ones we love—but as this issue’s stories demonstrate, things often work out that way. Ah, family!

Consider siblings. In R. T. Lawton’s “The Chinese Box,” for instance, the city-bred and educated son of a Shan Army warlord finds himself in stiff competition with his own older half-brother, while two actors who once played brothers on a hit TV show have a very different off-screen dynamic in Brendan DuBois’s “The Wildest One.” Ecuadoran P.I. Wilson Salinas, meanwhile, must retrieve his neighbor’s granddaughter—snatched by her own father in Tom Larsen’s “En Agua Caliente.” A woman working a prison kitchen is tested when the man who killed her father demands that she help him escape in Janice Law’s “Good Girl.” And a family inheritance is at stake in our Mystery Classic, “Betrayed by a Buckle” by Louisa May Alcott, introduced by Marianne Wilski Strong.

Conventioneers extraordinaire Spade and Paladin see their extended family of SF fans and writers divided by a bitter schism with criminal consequences in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s “Unity Con.” A mob family’s brutal management of a co-op inspires two retired seniors to act in “Rats” by Tom Savage. And new to our pages this month, Matthew Wilson brings a tale of an army sergeant confronting racism among his brothers-in-arms at a training base in Germany in “The Cook Off.”

A man who once looked for unexploded WWII ordnance in Europe must confront his own past when he encounters an old lover in Mark Thielman’s atmospheric “Buried Past.” Loren D. Estleman’s Four Horseman return with a case involving a patriotic “Scrap Drive.” Feuding neighbors bring color and headaches to Detective Sergeant Fritz Dollinger’s investigation of the murder of a young musician in John H. Dirckx’s procedural “Counterpoint.”

History repeats itself in Dennis McFadden’s dual coming-of-age story, “Coolbrook Twp.” And a bad actor gets a shot at auditioning for a psychological thriller in this month’s cover story, James Lincoln Warren’s “Casting Call.”

Once again, these stories show that blood will tell.

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December 20, 2017 · 1:45 pm

Expect the Unexpected (January/February 2018)

There’s always an extent to which crime is unexpected, except for the perpetrator—that is, if things go off as planned. It’s often the surprises, though, that make a great mystery story.

You don’t expect a killer to make an appearance at a holiday party, unfortunately for the revelers in Michael Nethercott’s “Sinners at Eight.” And when you’re a young, naïve bookstore clerk, you don’t expect that doing someone a favor will have the repercussions seen in Peter Sellers’ “Christmas Help.”

A corporate attorney doesn’t expect to take on a murder case for a former client in “Coroners Don’t Change Faces” by S. Frederic Liss. But the unemployed nephew of a Hollywood mogul does expect to do great things as a masked crime fighter in James Lincoln Warren’s sendup “The Chinese Dog Mystery.”

A homeless bum doesn’t expect to have a visitor in jail in Robert Lopresti’s “Train Tracks,” but it changes his life. While an unexpected visit from U.S. Postal inspectors confirms a young Navajo boy’s suspicions in David Hagerty’s “Fair Trade.”

In Marianne Wilski Strong’s “Louisa and the Lighthouse,” a beach stroll leads to the unexpected finding of a prized necklace, while the writings of Louisa May Alcott help knit together the clues. In Alex C. Renwick’s “Shallow Sand,” a beachcomber finds more than he expected with the help of a metal detector. An unexpected windfall brings trouble for a woman with a gambling bug in John M. Floyd’s “Scavenger Hunt.” And a seemingly chance purchase from a sidewalk vendor unexpectedly troubles long-buried memories in Janice Law’s “The Crucial Game.”

Plus we have two great (only to be expected) procedurals from John H. Dirckx (“Go for the Juggler”) and David Edgerley Gates (“A Multitude of Sins”).

Finally, this issue’s Mystery Classic is “Nebuchadnezzar” by Dorothy L. Sayers. The story was selected for us by B. K. Stevens, a life-long admirer of Sayers. Sadly B. K. Stevens died before she had a chance to write the introduction, though I know she chose it in part for its humor and because it’s one of the author’s lesser-known stories.

As always, our tales may take some unexpected turns, but you can always expect to find great crime fiction in these pages.

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October 24, 2017 · 3:15 pm

Dark Recesses (November/December 2017)

As the days grow short and winter looms, the lengthening evenings offer ample time and reason to brood over the nature of darkness. As the stories in this issue attest, a landscape of shadows offers far too many opportunities for both deception and misperception.

One skilled navigator of the shadows is post-war Manhattan private investigator Memphis Red, who confronts shifting motivations, political alliances, and even identities in L. A. Wilson Jr.’s “Harlem Nocturne.” Meanwhile, a young woman who seeks the shadows, trying to escape the consequences of a one-time lapse in judgment, finds she can’t escape those determined to find her in S. L. Franklin’s “Damsels in Distress.” And the shadow of calamity, in the form of drought, leaves a western town vulnerable to a charismatic, and dangerous, itinerant preacher in Gilbert Stack’s “Pandora’s Hoax.”

The idea of the serial killer casts its own dreadful shadow, as the residents of Laskin, South Dakota find in Eve Fisher’s “Darkness Visible.” The neighbors in Robert S. Levinson’s “The House Across the Street” also know a little something about serial killers—and they’re willing to share. And speaking of neighbors, a suspected witch in Kilgore, Texas beguiles her hapless neighbor in William Dylan Powell’s “The Darkness and the Light.”

Photographer Anita Ray takes up the cause of an American mathematician-turned-nun who is brutally attacked but who refuses to talk to the police in Susan Oleksiw’s “A Slight Deviation from the Mean.” And Tara Laskowski gets into the head of another woman in a brutal situation in her short-short “Hostage.”

To mitigate the darkness a bit, mid-level coworkers wreak their own special brand of havoc in plain sight in Robert Lopresti’s “The Chair Thief,” while R. T. Lawton’s Holiday Burglars return in “Black Friday,” where they must face up to their competition.

Each of B. K. Stevens’s Leah Abrams mysteries take place around a different Jewish holiday, and “Death Under Construction” is set during the fall harvest festival of Sukkot.  Leah takes a temp job at a firm that makes luxury doghouses while she works on her academic tome on workplace communications, so she is receptive to the subtle clues when the firm’s manger is killed in the storeroom.

We welcome back to these pages Carol Cail, with her tale of mysterious goings-on and hidden rooms at a seniors’ community in “Ghost Busters.” And we welcome Anna Castle, whose first story for us is “For Want of a Book,” featuring a young Francis Bacon.

This issue also features the second installment of our new feature The Case Files: this time, Steve Hockensmith brings to light some cutting-edge mystery-related podcasts. We’re sure you’ll want to check them out.

So there’s no need to be afraid of the dark when you have such a substantial issue of great stories with which to while away the evenings.

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August 22, 2017 · 10:00 am

Familial Faultlines (September/October 2017)

There are few better sources of drama than the family, as many of the stories in this issue illustrate. If one is well advised to keep friends close and enemies closer, then perhaps one must keep family members closest of all.

A death in the family often provides an occasion for changes—such as for the widow in Charles Todd’s “The Trophy” who seeks solace in the countryside of southern Wales, or the woman in Jane K. Cleland’s “Night Flight to Bali,” who is suddenly freed to cash in a forged painting upon the death of her domineering mother.

Or family ties may throw up walls that are difficult for outsiders to penetrate, such as in the investigation into possible insurance fraud involving a disabled teen and his mother in John Shepphird’s “Electric Boogaloo,” or the tangled relationships revealed by the court transcript of a case of a contested will in Eve Fisher’s “Happy Families.”

But sometimes such ties can be powerful motivators—such as for the Muslim woman who hires Beijing P.I. Il yong to find the Uighur son she’d given up for adoption in Martin Limón’s “The Smuggler of Samarkand”—or sources of support and encouragement, such as Jack Tait finds in his formidable aunts as he tries to prevent a rush to judgment against a black tenant farmer in the Depression-era South in “How Lon Pruitt Was Found Murdered in an Open Field with no Footprints Around,” by Mike Culpepper.

Other stories in this issue feature a perfect storm of disasters for Deputy Hector Moody when his car breaks down in the Gallatin mountain range in David Edgerley Gates’s “Cabin Fever”; the outsized dreams of a mid-level accountant in Max Gersh’s “Self-Portrait”; a copyeditor using her wits to foil an e-mail scammer in Steve Hockensmith’s “i”; a volatile partnership between a writer and an actor in Janice Law’s “The Front Man”; an aging spy recalled to action in Michael Mallory’s “Aramis and the Worm”; Dr. John H. Watson encounters a gentleman with a strange health regimen in “The Vampire of Edinburgh” by James Tipton.

No matter the state of your relations with other relatives, our readers are valued members of the AHMM family.

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June 23, 2017 · 10:00 am

Scorcher! (July/August 2017)

The torrid days of summer are the perfect time to kick back and read, and our July/August issue is full of hot new fiction. From flaring tempers to the spiciest of chicken wings to a world baked by global warming, the characters in this issue brave it all.

A food-truck owner with the hottest wings in town and his off-duty security guard–customer deal with some unwanted heat in Robert Mangeot’s “Let It Burn.” Jay Carey returns with another distopian procedural set in a future Florida ravaged by global warming in “We Frequent the Moon Bar.” The heat of an office romance drives characters to make poor decisions in Cathryn Grant’s “Serious Damage.” And in our cover story, some minor league ball players are filling their off-hours by making an amateur movie when they learn of the drowning of a teammate in Chris Muessig’s “The Making of Velveteen Dream.”

Meanwhile, a rural gathering of southeast Asian drug warlords proves difficult navigating for a city-bred teen in R. T. Lawton’s “Merit Making.” A pit stop at a lonely diner puts small-town Mississippi sheriff Ray Douglas and mystery writer Jenny Parker conveniently close to the scene of a murder in John M. Floyd’s whodunit “Trail’s End.” O’Neil De Noux returns in noirish form with a new story about the 1940s New Orleans PI Lucien Kaye, “The Magnolia Murders.” Joseph D’Agnese offers an unusual Sherlockian tale, with Mycroft and Mrs. Hudson facing off in “A Respectable Lady.” And a former fur trapper struggles with settled life—and a murder—in Eric Rutter’s “Blood Debt.”

We warmly welcome two authors new to our pages this issue. Bev Vincent offers a tale of an unlikely superhero in “Pain-Man.” And Susan Breen introduces novice PI Maggie Dove as she tackles her first big case in “The Countess of Warsaw.”

Finally, Steve Liskow scores his second Black Orchid Novella Award with “Look What They’ve Done to My Song, Ma,” which once again visits the Detroit music scene for a new mystery involving the members of that hot new band, Promise.

So find a convenient pool, a cool beverage, and some shades because this issue’s stories are hot, hot, hot.

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May 4, 2017 · 11:34 am

Delights, Dangers, and Debuts (May/June 2017)

Our May/June issue is heavy on the humor, but nicely balanced with some darker tales, and topped off by several voices new to our pages. A perfect medley of crime.

On the lighter side is Jeff Cohen’s nervous dad-to-be/proprietor of a comedy film theater, who has serious doubts about the hospital staff in “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Girl!”; and Neil Schofield’s ex-Detective-Inspector Harry Tattersby and his side-kick, small-time burglar Eggy, who plumb their underworld connections to break up a gang of under-aged thieves in “Tattersby and the Silence of the Lumbs”; and Catherine Dilts’ scheming Granny cleans up in Turnip Junction in “Unrepentant Sinner.” A tired comedian in a Borscht-belt resort frames John C. Boland’s story “The Kubelsky Block,” featuring perceptive widow Tamar Gillespie, and even draws a few laughs.

Messing with the toughest man in Halifax, Skig Skorzeny, is a dangerous feat, especially when his mechanic Creepy Culbertson has his back in Jas. R. Petrin’s “Money Maker.” Two commuters on the graveyard shift bond over their fondness for mystery novels in Christopher Latragna’s story “The Loneliest Night of the Week.” Detective Fritz Dollinger and Detective Lieutenant Cyrus Auburn team up to puzzle what happened to cause the death of an unidentified man found with a cryptic message in his pocket.

We welcome three newcomers this issue. SJI Holliday’s Scottish Sergeant Davie Gray, who spends his Brighton vacation investigating a murder in “Home from Home,” is featured in her novels Black Wood, Willow Walk, and Damselfly. Retired Judge Debra H. Goldstein—author of Maze in Blue and Should Have Played Poker— brings us “The Night They Burned Ms. Dixie’s Place,” which takes place in Birmingham during the Civil Rights era. Los Angeles native Paul D. Marks has had a long career in film directing and writing. He is also the author of White Heat (2012) and Vortex (2015) as well as countless short stories. His story “Twelve Angry Days” recalls the old Henry Fonda film, Twelve Angry Men, but with a very different outcome.

In addition, Jason Half introduces one of his favorite mystery classics, “Daisy Bell” by Gladys Mitchell. All in all, twelve fiendishly good stories to keep you awake all night.

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February 21, 2017 · 10:04 am

Strength of Character (March/April 2017)

Crime is character building, at least in crime fiction, because it is characters, their dark psychologies and questionable motivations, that drive compelling stories—as the tales in this issue amply demonstrate.

What compels a model prisoner, in Tony Richards’s “Magpie Man,” to burst out of jail just before he is to be lawfully released? What motivates a desperate woman, in Dale Berry’s graphic story “Dead Air,” to strike up a conversation with a radio DJ? Why does a detective, in Wayne J. Gardiner’s “Bygones,” return home for the funeral of his high-school adversary?

Interpersonal entanglements complicate Charles John Harper’s police procedural “The Echoes.” A man seeking invisibility is driven from the dangerous shadows in Bob Tippee’s “Underground Above Ground.” Susan Oleksiw’s “How Do You Know What You Want” is a poignant story of a teen in foster care and the woman who tries to connect with her, and Martin Limón’s P.I. Il Yong pursues a case that takes him to the remote reaches of the Himalayas, where survival may depend on the uncertain kindness of othes, in “hominid.”

Social institutions and conventions are questioned in Alan E. Foulds’ “Razor’s Edge” when a reporter revisits a long-ago cold case, and in Mitch Alderman’s “Bleak Future” when P.I. Bubba Simms looks into extortion among central Florida’s genteel society. An old injustice gets a fresh look in “Rough-Hewn Retribution,” Nancy Pauline Simpson’s historical set in the early twentieth century South. A homicide detective and suspect match wits in the interview room in Chris Knopf’s “A Little Cariñoso.” And a land dispute is complicated—and deadly—in Gilbert M. Stack’s British historical whodunit “Greed.”

Watch out, these complicated characters will steal your attention—and perhaps your sympathy.

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December 20, 2016 · 2:44 pm

Holiday Double Issue (January/February 2017)

P.I.’s and fixers, burglars and soldiers all join together in our HOLIDAY DOUBLE ISSUE to send you the best wishes of the season! We visit winter locales past and present, chilly and tropical. Michael Nethercott takes readers back to the Fifties with a new tale featuring his Connecticut sleuths Lee Plunket and Mr. O’Nelligan, while S. J. Rozan sets her new series in Manhattan’s Chinatown with matriarch Yong-Yun. Brendan DuBois revisits a facet of rural New England life—kvetching at the town dump. Jay Carey’s Police Chief Eureka Kilburn deals with crime in a time of post global warming Sarasota, and Terence Faherty has an amusing take on Philo Vance that is set in Hawaii. In addition with we have a Mystery Classic treat: a suspenseful puzzler by Hugh Pentecost featuring hotel manager Pierre Chambrun—and you won’t want to miss Marvin Lachman’s insightful introduction for modern-day readers. Happy holidays from AHMM!

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