Dear Mr. Townsend, by E.A. Aymar

 

 "Dear Mr. Townsend," by E.A. Aymar, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, January/February 2026.

 This is the second appearance by Aymar in my Best Of column. It's a very quirky story.

First, it is epistolary,  consisting of emails to Hank Townsend from many sources. Second, it keeps shifting between the comic and the tragic.  That can mean failure in a story but Aymar makes it work.

The comic is very comic.  For example, Townsend gets email from his former attorney who is now disbarred and running a business called LegalishAdvice: When it just needs to be plausible. 

But he is also receiving email from a mental health counselor who doesn't seem to be doing him much good, and a company called Patroit Handguns which ends each note with "Shoot your shot!"  And then there are hilarious but scary notes from a customer relations guy who sends him threats.

In other words, Townsend has issues, some of his own making.  He is trying to better his messy situation and you can't help but root for him... 

  

 

Love is Blue, by Lawrence Maddox

 "Love is Blue," by Lawrence Maddox, in in Tennis Noir, edited by John Shepphird, Level Best Books, 2026.

This is my friend Lawrence Maddox's third appearance in this column.  It tells the woeful tale of Marvin Stang a film editor, who has a gambling problem.  Well, as he sees it he has a problem with a bookie, but one thing leads to another, doesn't it?

He is trying to earn some   quick money doing a vanity project for Angelika Blueler, an over-the-hill tennis great, who wants to make a video of her glory days.  But Blue is not easy to get along with.

Two complications pile on: Los Angeles happens to be on fire and Blue wants Marvin's help in dealing with a blackmailer.  Specifically she wants to get at the blackmailer's stash of filthy pictures which happen to be in the part of L.A. which happens to be, did I mention, on fire.

What could possibly go wrong?

You will have a lot of fun finding out.

Hard Luck Penny, by Scott McKinnon

 "Hard Luck Penny," by Scott McKinnon, in The Yard, February 15, 2026.

I think this is the first time a first story made my best-of list since 2023. 

“So,” Penny says, “do you guys get a commission every time you flash a weapon, or is it a contractual obligation?”

Penny has been kidnapped.  She doesn't seem to be taking very seriously. 

The three bad guys work for Moe and Moe is mad at her cousin.

Penny stares up at him. “Let me guess, bad Yelp review?”

Being suspenseful and funny at the same time is a good trick.  Penny and McKinnon pull it off.

The Right to Lose, by Wil Medearis

"The Right to Lose," by Wil Medearis, in Tennis Noir, edited by John Shepphird, Level Best Books, 2026.

It's unusual when my best-of-the-week twice in a row is back-to-back stories from the same source, but here we are.

A man, down on his luck, meets a beautiful, rich woman, who convinces him to break the law.

Sound familiar?  It is the basic plot of Noir Fiction.  To make it memorable an author has to come up with something new.  Medearis succeeds. 

Our down-on-his-luck guy is Millar, who was a tennis pro but he didn't succeed and now he isa tennis pro at a country club. "The status of my preferred sport was clear, third in line behind golf and single malt scotch."

 The beautiful woman is Angie, a thirty-year-old woman who has moved back in with her parents who live at the club.  She has ben systematically robbing the houses of her neighbors. "To Angie, it was all psychological, or political, I couldn't keep it straight, her smoldering resentment."

Now she wants to make her biggest heist ever and she needs Millar's help.  He doesn't want to do it, but ne really needs the  money.

So far, so standard noir.  But there is a clever surprise waiting for Millar and for us.  

The Summer Tournament, by Jason Starr

 "The Summer Tournament," by Jason Starr, in Tennis Noir, edited by John Shepphird, Level Best Books, 2026.

Ah, the first anthology of the year.  How refreshing.   

Most mystery stories center on plot.  Some on dialog.  This one is mostly a character study. 

Alan, the narrator, is a psychotherapist, a husband and a father.  He also likes to sleep with other men's wives.  But his real interest - obsession, really - is tennis.  

It is the late seventies and Alan and his family spend each summer at a tennis camp in the Catskills. Alan is determined to  win the singles championship  for a third time in a row.  And everything, everything, has to bend to his obsession.

"I was a narcissist, but this was one of my best qualities, actually. It meant I was in touch with my needs and desires and had the courage to love myself.  What was so wrong with that?" 

This story is a  lovely combination of psychobabble,  twisted justification, and sports madness.

 

El Artista Fugitivo, by Tom Larsen

 "El Artista Fugitivo," by Tom Larsen, in Black Cat Weekly, #227, 2026.

This is the second story by Larsen to make this list, and it stars the same character.  

Wilson Salinas is a private detective in his native Ecuador.  This story takes place not long after he sets up his business after leaving Seattle where he worked as a chef until alcohol got the better of him.  

His U.S. experience helped him get a new client, an American P.I. named Cabrera who  wants him to find a yankee who has disappeared.  Jefferson Bushnell is an eighty-year-old painter.  Why does Cabrera want to find him? Because Bushnell got the detective's twenty-year-old niece pregnant.

If that sounds suspicious Salinas agrees with you.  But he takes the case and, as usual, finds out that it is not nearly as straightforward as it seems.

This is a fun private eye story.  I have to say there is a goof in the storytelling it that someone should have caught. It doesn't affect the  plot but it is certain to annoy alert readers.

 

Best of 2025

 

I forgot to mention that last week I put up my best stories of the year list at SleuthSayers.  This is year #17, and 18 tales made the list. 

Counting Windows, by V.S. Kemanis

 

 "Counting Windows," by V.S. Kemanis, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, November/December 2025.

 This is the second story by Kemanis to make my list. 

Among the ten thousand rules for writing the proper short story you can find recommendations that you should keep the cast of characters small and the focus tight. Good advice and, like most good advice, there are times to ignore it.

This tale centers on a neighborhood of twelve households which have been been gathering for parties for years.  One family includes Daria, a teenager who suffers from OCD in the form of a germ phobia which makes eating a misery.

Another home includes Melody Wolfe who is found dead in the woods, an apparent suicide.  How do these two relate, and how do the rest of the neighbors connect? That's the interesting part.  

No reader will be surprised by the solution, but watching the characters figure it out is a pleasure. 

Squirrel Day Afternoon, by Gregory Fallis

 

"Squirrel Day Afternoon," by Gregory Fallis, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, November/December 2025.

This is the fifth story by Gregory Fallis to land on my best-of page.

This is a very witty story.

Chonk and Twomey are ex-cops, now private eye partners. They are dining on buttermilk-fried Squirrel nuggets when a potential client calls.  ('Never answer the phone,' Chonk said.")

Robbie Waterman is a privileged jerk with a potentially serious problem.  His disgruntled college student daughter just stole one of his guns.  Well, not stole.  Just borrowed, maybe. He's afraid she may be about to pawn it.  Our heroes are afraid she might have something worse in mind.

This could turn into a nasty story about an active shooter on campus but as it happens Fallis has other ideas.  

There was something smug and self-satisfied bout the [professor's] office that made Chonk want to feed him bugs and flies. He probably didn't deserve to be shot by a disgruntled student, Chonk thought, but it was a close thing.

Like I said, very witty.

The Roosevelt Affair, by Adam Meyer

 "The Roosevelt Affair," by Adam Meyer, in Crimecopia: The Not So Frail Detective Agency, Murderous Ink Press, 2026.

A nice straightforward historical P.I. story with the bonus of real people included among the characters.

It's Albany, New York, 1932. Rosie Perkins, private eye, gets a mysterious and not too friendly summons to the governor's mansion.  Seems the great man was indiscreet with another woman and he and his aides are desperate to learn who took the photographs and get them back.  This is crucial because the governor has big plans for the coming year.

His name, of course, is Franklin Roosevelt.  

Rosie meets with him, then with  wife Eleanor who seems less concerned about her husband's infidelity than his possibly damaged electability.

There will be some surprises along the way to a happy ending.