Ellery Queen Mystery - December 14, 2017

Happy New Year from EQMM! As is our winter tradition, our January/February 2018 issue is full of seasonal suspense and Sherlockian detection. Fans of Terence Faherty’s series from the lost manuscripts of Dr. John Watson will find a new tale, “The Noble Bachelor,” while amateur sleuths employ Holmes’s methods to find compelling solutions to strange problems in “Tapping the Glass” by Jane Jakeman and “The Case of the Curious Collector” by John Morgan Wilson. Police are on the case in Kate Ellis’s nuclear-plant thriller “Half-Life,” in “Burg’s Hobby Case” by Matthew Wilson, set in Cold War Germany (Department of First Stories), and, with help from the criminal underworld, in “Stick” by Doug Allyn.

The holidays can dredge up past dark deeds, and end-of-year festivities are not without financial woes and strained relationships. In “White Tights and Mary Janes,” Edwin Hill’s Department of First Stories debut, one woman tries to hold it all together, while in Elizabeth Elwood’s “Ghosts of Christmas Past” another takes us to a vacant mansion and its long-ago tragedy. Other haunting visages from Christmases past arise in “The Sofa Doll” by Barbara Cleverly.

“The Lighthouse and the Lamp” by William Dylan Powell, is a tale of improbable wishes—but be careful; in “The Final Analysis” by Luciano Sívori (Passport to Crime) and “Wake Me When It’s Over” by Robert Garner McBrearty, dark dreams threaten to come true. Larry Light’s “Dysperception” hits a cautionary note too, this one about best-laid plans.

If you yearn for warmer climes, try “Farewell Cruise” by Martin Edwards, immerse yourself in the South American discoveries of Margaret Maron’s characters in “There Are No Elephants in Peru,” follow the twists of Angela Crider Neary’s culinary mystery “Murder on Rue Royal,” conjure up dangerous caving in Mexico in Marilyn Todd’s “Killing Kevin,” or visit the West Coast where, in Robert S. Levinson’s “The Public Hero,” a P.I. is made a strange proposal by a Hollywood movie maker.