A Word From the Editor
Sisters in Crime NY Chapter’s New Anthology
This issue contains some great stories which we all hope you'll read and comment on. This time Vero came through wth some book reviews and there are columns and interviews as well. Everyone at Mysterical-E hopes you'll enjoy the issue. If you're on Facebook, you might enjoy joining the Mysterical-E …
Stories
Episode Seven in the Copper and Goldie Mysteries Kianah Nahoe heard footsteps falling in behind her. Quickening her pace down Pensacola Street, she glanced over her shoulder for the second time, yet each time she looked, the footsteps stopped and no one was there. Someone is following me. She’d felt …
Stories
Nobody likes a crooked copper. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t crooked before I went to prison, it was enough that I’d been crooked since. With a single exception my former colleagues despised me more than my former enemies, which was how I came to be walking along the cobbles …
Stories
“You never know what evil the ashes are hiding.” The graybeard’s pipe glowed against the dark. “Or what memories.” I dragged the iron rake through the edges of the fire. “Good men were lost, in pursuit of that girl.” That girl my heart-twin, nursed with me after her mother’s death. …
Stories
“I don’t think I got the job, Mike.” “You got the job.” “My interview stunk. I was awkward.” “What nineteen year-old isn’t?” “When Rayburn asked what my weaknesses were I said what you told me, that I care too much, that I’m too much of a perfectionist. And I think …
Stories
There are times when an ordinary errand can lead to a unique experience. Take, for example, my last trip to the office-supply store to buy legal pads. I use them to scribble on and on about my discontents, which, over the years, I’ve collected like butterflies. I had hoped they …
Stories
I had no intentions of looking for anything in particular in the classified ads when the particular ended up finding me: Specialty hardware tools and equipment for sale. Big and small. Call for an appointment. Beneath was listed an 860 number and an address in Hartford's South End. Its been …
Stories
As Tank flipped a hamburger the back of his neck clenched. Reflexively he ducked, clutched his spatula as if it were a knife and swung his eyes through the kitchen pass-through and across his tiny restaurant to the front door. The white Caribbean sun blazed in the open and empty …
Stories
Like an insistent saleswoman, the grieving mother held out a pair of high heels for inspection. “Look at them! These are what caused Kimberly’s death. Apparently she tripped. The police gave them to me in a plastic bag, along with what she was wearing—jeans and a top and her underwear.” …
Stories
It started on a Tuesday. I know my recollection is accurate because Gram made pancakes. She concocts those lopsided circles every Tuesday. And every week I refuse to eat them. Something about consuming a food that fails miserably at being round makes me gag. The bumps and lumps and uneven …
Stories
COINTELPRO (derived from COunter INTELligence PROgram) was a series of covert, and at times illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting and disrupting domestic political organizations. The lovely Emerald Larsen from Oslo, Norway showed kindness to her fellow man. At …
Stories
It came in the mail that morning, an article, ripped from a magazine and sent to her anonymously, stained with red marker and folded into a business-sized envelope. Along the margin in bold red strokes someone advised, "Patsi, you should read this". A question printed across the top of the …
Stories
“Must you watch?” she asked. “What else can I do? You’re hogging the TV.” Nan scowled at him. She executed a Downward-Facing Dog pose (though he had no idea what the move was called), surprising him with her flexibility. “I have to use it for the video,” Nan said, rising …
Stories
Chapter 1 “All right men, settle down,” the watch commander said as Lacy Judson walked into the briefing room. One of the hot dogs sitting at the briefing table looked at Judson and checked his watch. Judson was not late for briefing. He always came into the briefing room …
Columns
Summer News and Views As I write this column, it's mid-July and one of the stories buzzing is Daniel Dae Kim's and Grace Park's departure from the new HAWAII FIVE-0, unable to achieve pay parity with series stars Alex O'Loughlin (Steve McGarrett) and Scott Caan (Danny Williams) after seven seasons. …
Columns
Classic crime novels are gaining a new and younger audience. When you’ve run through the usual suspects like Sayers, Doyle, Chesterton, or Marsh, who do you turn to next or do you re-read them once more? How about tracking down some oft’ forgotten male writers. Last time I wrote about …
Columns
This issue, I decided to let a few favorite authors tell us again about their characters. After all, it’s the characters we love to read about, right? So here’s what they had to say! Author Erika Mailman has delved into the past before with her book on witchcraft and witch …
Interviews
Laura Elvebak sometimes feels she has led several lives, but throughout the years her passion for reading and writing never faltered. Born in North Dakota and raised in Los Angeles and San Francisco, she settled in Houston after living in parts of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Florida. She …
Interviews
For more than twenty years, Radine Trees Nehring's magazine features, essays, newspaper articles, and radio broadcasts have shared colorful stories about the people, places, events, and natural world near her Arkansas home. In 2002, Radine's first mystery novel, A VALLEY TO DIE FOR, was published and, in 2003 became a …
Reviews
Gumshoe for two by Rob Leininger Ex-IRS agent turned detective, Mortimer Angel is approached by Holiday, a beautiful prostitute while in a casino bar in Reno. Mort learns she's not really a hooker but is instead a college engineering student who is searching for her younger sister, Allie, who disappeared …
