Publisher's Synopsis
At the cutting edge of crime fiction, Mystery Weekly Magazine presents original short stories by the world's best-known and emerging mystery writers.
The stories we feature in our monthly issues span every imaginable subgenre, including cozy, police procedural, noir, whodunit, supernatural, hardboiled, humor, and historical mysteries. Evocative writing and a compelling story are the only certainty. Get ready to be surprised, challenged, and entertained--whether you enjoy the style of the Golden Age of mystery (e.g., Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle), the glorious pulp digests of the early twentieth century (e.g., Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler), or contemporary masters of mystery. In this issue: In our cover feature, "PROBLEMS AREN'T STOP SIGNS" by Robert Mangeot, Tori bet embezzled town money on old Air Force swampland, and now she's in deep. As in, fake a Bigfoot scare deep. Any go-getter knows the best thing to do in a hole is keep digging. Enter the twilight zone with "LIGHTNING" by John M. Floyd. Police Chief Mike Ryan is having a hard night: a child has disappeared with no trace, an old enemy has just been released from prison, and a huge storm is on its way. And things are about to get even worse ... Jude Roy brings us a caper with "THE MONEY MATTRESS." JD was skeptical that the rich old woman kept her money in a mattress, but people did crazy things, Finding her dead on the mattress was another problem. Chris McGinley haunts us with "COAL BLACK HAINT." A young girl takes to the hills in rural Appalachia, but never comes back. When the sheriff goes looking for her, the search brings back painful memories of her own daughter's disappearance into the same hills. Are the two stories related? "TEDDY BAER'S PICNIC" by Steve Liskow provides a witty tale when Dessert King Teddy Baer intends to retire and name his successor at his 65th birthday picnic, but his daughter Bronwyn and his several ex-wives decide to stage a hostile take-over. In "DOCTORED JUSTICE" by Earl Staggs, an aspiring novelist comes across evidence that a man on death row may be innocent of the crime that put him there. Was justice served, or does justice sometimes need a little doctoring?
