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Publisher of the world's leading crime and mystery fiction since 1941.
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Here, you will find highlights of each month's print issue – including excerpts from our award-winning short stories, our book-review column The Jury Box, and The Mystery Crossword.The place to be for a good mystery!
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July’s stories set sail on diverse courses, from deceptively calm waters to stormy seas. Brendan DuBois brings us aboard an anchored pontoon boat for a “journey” of justice (or revenge?) in "His Daughter's Island." In a similarly secluded setting, the former reporter in Barbara Arno Modrack's "Acting On a Tip" must come to terms with what his new lake-town home means to his career and family amidst a threatening crisis. In our Passport to Crime story this issue, a mystery surrounding an architectural exploration that touches on the Bible's Great Flood leads to an apparent locked-room murder (see "The Man with the Face of Clay" by Paul Halter). A South African shipwreck lays the backdrop for Commissioner Rivers as he investigates a crime that puts him face-to-face with his past in "Cruel Coast" by Scott Mackay. And both a lazy fishing hole (in the fondly-remembered Donald Olson's "Drowned in aSeaofDreams") and the party-laden California coastline (in "The Malibu Waltz" by Grant O'Neill) prove to have sinister undercurrents.
As in those watery adventures, our land-based tales send their characters—and us along with them—on curling waves of suspense and surprise. The narrator in N.J. Cooper's story "Diagnosis Death," for example, must unexpectedly consider her own death. In another story, the central character is forced to question long-accepted truths about her own beloved family (see "Death in the Time Machine" by Barbara Nadel). In "Shame the Devil,” James T. Shannon's Sergeant Souza must likewise journey back to his childhood neighborhood to unearth a rival's past and what led to his death.
In a lighter vein, seemingly straight-laced Exeter lords and ladies find themselves awash in a sticky social situation in Judith Cutler’s “What the Butler Saw,” and an eminent food critic’s tastes lead him, comically, to the middle of a crime scene in Mike Baron's "Five Stars.” Don’t get left on the dock!
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If you haven't read them yet, check out our Barry-nominated short stories, available free on the Deadly Pleasures website!
MYSTERY PLACE BOOKS announces a new DIGITAL ANTHOLOGY: Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine Presents: The Crooked Road. Get your copy today!
ANNOUNCEMENT FOR WRITERS: Electronic Submissions Now Open
EQMM is now using an online electronic submission system (http://eqmm.magazinesubmissions.com) that has been designed to streamline our process and improve communication with authors. We ask that all submissions be made through this system, rather than on paper, from now on. Please refer to our updated writers' guidelines for full details and instructions on manuscript formatting.
SPECIAL FEATURE STORY by Arthur Vidro: The Ransom of EQMM #1
ANNIVERSARY FEATURES: Articles & Photos Celebrating EQMM's 70th
EQMM Podcasts A recent addition to our EQMM website! Audio readings and dramatizations by the world's leading suspense writers. Visit our Podcast page today!
Check out this month's podcast: "Floored"
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His Daughter's Island by Brendan DuBois Art by Mark Evans
On a warm day in June, Zach Ford went out on a twenty-foot pontoon boat onLakePiscassicinMaine, with his best friend Rafer Carlton at the helm, heading for the island where his daughter had been killed. The island was easy to find: It was the biggest one on the lake, boasting a bright white mansion that looked like aHollywoodset had been dropped down from the sky. Zach was sitting next to Rafer, who maneuvered the pontoon boat closer to the island.
“You sure you want to get this close?” Rafer asked, sitting in the helmsman’s chair. . . . Read more.
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Acting on a Tip by Barbara Arno Modrack Art by Jason C. Eckhardt
It was just before the opening of deer season when the murders happened. Marty had been sober for just six months.
He heard it on the radio during the night, coming in faint and scratchy like it had been beamed from outer space as a message directly to him. In his half-sleep state he reached out to catch it like the tail end of a falling star. His sobriety was still so new that the days were horrendous bone-jarring agony. But his nights were wondrous and weightless, when he would sleep dreamlessly for three hours, awaken, reach for his bedside radio, and listen to the night talkers for an hour or so before drifting off again into a smooth, creamy slumber. . . . Read more.
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Don’t miss our must-read July issue, which features stories by Brendan DuBois, Judith Cutler, Barbara Nadel, Donald Olson and more!
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