Ellery Queen Mystery - February 16, 2018

Spring is ahead of us, and EQMM’s March/April 2018 issue brings you the freshest new short crime and mystery fiction. Stop and smell the roses—or seasonal harvests not so sweet—with MWA Grand Master Peter Lovesey in “Reader, I Buried Them,” set in an urban monastery, and with G.M. Malliet in the surprising “Victory Garden.” Get outdoors with a cop who faces a water-bound test in Brendan DuBois’s “The Submarine of Walker Lake”; on a mountain hike that spurs an amateur to pursue his friend’s case, in Thomas Przybilka and Gitta List’s Passport to Crime tale “Rest In Peace”; and with a mother and her wayward son at a seashore resort in Susan Perry Benson’s “Rip Currents.”

The cold wind lingers in Josh Pachter’s short-short “A Young Man’s Game,” and another contest holds sway in the finale to Chris Muessig and Steve Seder’s wrestling trilogy “One Fall to a Finish.”

Organized crime can seem impregnable, but characters find ways to combat it in “The Wedding Ring” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (about a conman and his identity-theft crew) and “Health and Safety” by Liza Cody, a thriller with a culinary twist. Watch the hierarchy of organized crime play out in “Tigers and Flies” by Cath Staincliffe and “The Avenging Angel” by John Lantigua, and match wits with a serial killer in “Bench Mark” by Marilyn Todd (featuring Ancient Rome’s Claudia Seferius).

It doesn’t get fresher than the Department of First Stories, and there Samantha Allen spins a tale of a recent widow in a struggling rural community, in “Some Kind of Lonely.” Watch a child take on an emotional case when his friend goes missing, in the harrowing “Sofee” by David Dean, and listen to a young narrator recount her exploits in Margaret Maron’s “The Last Man I Killed.”

Finally, treat yourself to “Cleopatran Cocktails” by William Burton McCormick and “Faceless Killer” by Christine Poulson, two unique stories from uncommon points of view. The March/April issue will get you ready for the season to turn—don’t miss it!