Authors in This Issue
The first Doug Allyn story edited by your current editor was January 1992’s “Icewater Mansions.” It features Lake Michigan diver Mitch Mitchell, just as this new story does. However, a couple of years after the story appeared (before the novel of the same title was released), the author decided a female character would work better for the series, and the previously male Mitch became Michelle.
Several years ago a story by Joyce Carol Oates entitled “The Appointment” appeared in Weird Fiction Review. She’s transformed that story, giving it a different focus and nearly doubling its length, and we are pleased to publish it here as a new work of fiction. In its earlier form it was not a crime story. Now it is. The author’s 2022 novel Babysitter also has a crime element. The New York Times Book Review called it “a ghost story without the ghosts, but with tension thick enough to inspire several heart attacks. Read with care.”
Brendan DuBois is the author of twenty-four novels, many of them bestsellers. But his short-story output is equally impressive. He’s close to having 200 published stories. They’ve brought him three Shamus Awards, two Barry Awards, two Derringers, the EQMM Readers Award, and three Edgar nominations.
Michael Grimala currently lives in Las Vegas, where he’s a reporter for the Las Vegas Sun. He’s won three Nevada Press Association Awards for feature writing for his contributions to that paper. EQMM published the Massachusetts native’s first fiction in the Department of First Stories of our July/August 2021 issue. He returns with a story inspired by a real Las Vegas law related to elections.
A former academic historian, Alice Hatcher has placed many short stories in journals such as Alaska Quarterly Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, and Gargoyle. She’s also appeared in EQMM previously. Her first novel, The Wonder That Was Ours, won the 2017 Dzanc Prize for Fiction.
In its review of The Murder of Gonzago, one of the novels in R. T. Raichev’s Antonia Darcy series (to which this story belongs), Mystery Tribune said: “[Raichev] is the only writer we know who can masterfully blend a modern-day setting with memorable [Golden Age-style] plots. . . . The result is a book with its own character and soul, and unlike its equivalents from the Golden Age.”
Short-story writer Travis Richardson has won a Derringer Award for flash fiction and is a past nominee for the Anthony and Macavity awards for best short story. An L.A. resident, he’s the author of Bloodshot and Bruised: Crime Stories from the South and West.
Born in Upper Austria, Beatrix Kramlovsky currently lives in Lower Austria, the country’s wine region. In addition to being a writer of novels and crime stories, she’s a visual artist with exhibits in a number of galleries. Translations of several of her earlier stories have appeared in EQMM.
Best known for his iconic character Perry Mason, Erle Stanley Gardner created many other popular sleuths. One such was Ed Jenkins, star of this story—a former thief who sometimes works on the side of the law. Jenkins appeared in Black Mask more than seventy times.
Although this is Pip Thompson’s first paid publication at professional rates, she had a story published previously in a Canadian literary journal. The Virginia author has also completed a novel for which she has obtained representation through a New York literary agency. Her career is, therefore, already off to a good start. We’re happy to introduce her to our readers.
An Australian solicitor, A.F. Bhuyan has been writing short stories for a number of years. His work appeared in Best New Writing in 2008 and was an Editor’s Choice Award selection. He has also had stories in Gargoyle and in our sister publication, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. This EQMM debut story is one we’re sure you won’t forget.
A former forensic psychologist, Richard Helms has been nominated seven times for the Shamus Award, winning in 2021 for an EQMM story; once for the Macavity Award, winning in 2021 for an EQMM story; twice for the ITW Thriller Award, winning in 2010 for an EQMM story; and eight times for the Derringer Award, winning twice. His latest novel is A Kind and Savage Place (2022).
Missouri writer J.D. Frain earned a degree in journalism before opening a small marketing company. For a few years now he’s been writing short stories, selling several of them; this is the first at professional rates. He says he’s just finishing up his first novel!
A professor of history and the author of several nonfiction books, David Krugler has also produced two World War II spy thrillers, both published by Pegasus Crime: The Dead Don’t Bleed and Rip the Angels from Heaven. Both received starred reviews from PW.
A winner of the Hammett Prize for Literary Excellence in Crime Writing as well as two Mary Higgins Clark awards, Carol Goodman is the author of more than two dozen novels. Her as-yet-unpublished novel Midnight at the Half Moon introduces sleuth Peggy Quinn as she solves the “Mermaid Murders,” prior to her adventures in this new story, which publishes first.
Best known as the creator of the hit TV show Blue Murder, and for her Sal Kilkenny P.I. series (to which this new story belongs), Cath Staincliffe has also written a number of radio dramas in recent years. This year her three-part thriller Undercover: Close to Home aired on BBC Radio 4.