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!
Subscribe today.

Why do you love a good mystery, even (and especially) when it’s full of mischief, mayhem, and usually a body or two? Many of you will say that it’s because human nature can be most fully explored in situations of danger, and that human intelligence can best be explored through the solving of a problem, no matter what culture or way of life the characters inhabit. The July issue of EQMM is a perfect study in this, as we see characters from places as varied as modern day Africa and medieval Ireland face the same types of obstacles, become haunted by the same types of ghosts, and fight for the same types of justice.

Twist Phelan’s detective Henri Karubje returns this month, and his painful memories of a childhood spent amidst Rwandan genocide—along with his nuanced knowledge of African culture—give him special insight in solving a case involving a missing girl in New York City (“Footprints in Water”). Revolving around a different area of conflict in Africa, in Nina George’s powerful Passport story “The Game of her Life” (the German-language version of which was last year’s Glauser winner), a young girl uses the medium of soccer to rally for freedom against her own fate and those of her Nigerian peers.

Another strong young character—this time, one you’ve already met as an adult—appears in Peter Tremayne’s “The Comb Bag”; Sister Fidelma’s first day of law school gives us an academic study of justice. And in Edward Marston’s “Paper Chase,” returning P.I. Jeb Lyman reveals the truth behind a strange disappearance that leaves plenty of victims in its wake.

Family is a theme in all of the above stories, as it is Bill Pronzini’s “The Cemetery Man,” Susan Perry Benson’s wry but haunting first story “Tradition,” and Chris F. Holm’s puzzling “Pretty Little Things; what we lie to our families about, what we sacrifice for them, and what we’d sacrifice them for.

As we see themes and values spread across many cultures in this issue, so too we see common images, and “The Gallows-Bird” by Kevin Mims—about an aspiring writer tempted by the promise of success—and “Hangman’s Break” by Albert Tucher—a dark tale about a veteran’s past and present—are a prime example of this. This issue weaves through areas both dark and light, with images both dark and disturbing, and with characters that speak to everyone, no matter where you’re from. It’s a must read!

Don’t miss our July 2013 issue, which features stories by Twist Phelan, Bill Pronzini, Peter Tremayne, Edward Marston and much more!