Strangers on a Train on a Train, by Paul Ryan O'Connor

"Strangers on a Train on a Train," by Paul Ryan O'Connor, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, May/June 2026. 

This is the second story by O'Connor to grace this page.  The main character of the first story is a minor player in this one.  Great title, by the way.

Cass is a college student and she is watching guess-which-movie on her phone  on a subway train when a stranger comes up and starts talking to her about it.  He's interested in making a deal with her, similar to the one in the flick: an exchange of crimes.

"What if I don't want to kill anyone?" Cass said.

"You mean if you don't want to kill anyone YET," the man said.

The man's name is Pollock and he is a cop.  He knows a lot about Cass, which is a puzzle because there is a lot to know.  She is not your average college student. This means she is in more danger than you might expect, but it might mean more danger for someone else.

A nicely suspenseful story with many twists and turns.

Pandora's Bounty, by Gilbert M. Stack

 

"Pandora's Bounty," by Gilbert M. Stack, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, May/June 2026.

I was surprised that this is only the second time one of Stack's stories made my best-of list.  I am very fond of the tales in this series.

He writes western mysteries about an unusual trio of adventurers. Corey "Rock Quarry" Callaghan is a bare-knuckle boxer making a precarious life fighting for money through the small towns of the west.  Patrick Sullivan is his trainer.  Pandora Parson is a professional gambler, and the brains of the group.

Patrick is especially not the brains.  In fact, in any situation he is pretty much guaranteed to make things worse.  There was one point in this story when he said something so ill-advised that I startled my wife by gasping out loud.

So, what is the situation the friends find themselves in?  A bounty has been put out for Corey because he beat up two miners and stole their gold.  Except he didn't do that, of course. Someone is imitating our hero, boxing under his name, and dirtying it in the process.

Pandora, naturally, comes up with an elaborate scheme to draw the impostor to them and then expose him.  A clever and satisfactory story.

It's Complicated, by Nick Guthrie

 "It's Complicated," by Nick Guthrie, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2026.

"There's a million and one ways to lose a body out here, if that's what you want to do," Reuben called after me, before laughing again. He spoke like a man who knew all the best places to hide a body on this fifteen hundred-acre  estate and hadn't quite used them all up yet.

 Reuben, gamekeeper on said estate is one of several people who might be a help our narrator, Suzie Lee. Or might be her worst enemy.  Because she can't trust anyone.

Suzie is a cop and she has been hiding in this rural area of England for four months with Kurt, her ex-lover.  He is another cop and  has been investigating corruption in the highest levels of the police, for which he was rewarded with a bullet.  

Now, after four months of seeming safety they have found a dead body in front of their cabin.  Is it possibly a coincidence?  Sure, but we all know it ain't.  Somebody has found them and somebody wants them dead.  

What does Suzie want, exactly? Well, read the title. 

 

Intervention, by Terry Black

"Intervention," by Terry Black, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2026. 

 Very short stories can be wonderful, but, boy, they are hard to review. How much can you say without giving away too much? This tale is very good but it's under 2,000 words, so forgive me if I keep this brief.

Our hero -- well, let him speak for himself.

[T]here's no girlfriend, no guy friends, no social group, no family -- I'm one of a dozen kids in a foster home where no one cares. I get bullied in school and sit alone at lunch and never get invited anywhere, b y anyone.  Zero social life, zero reason to keep on living.

So now he is standing on the roof of a six-store building, girding himself to take that one last step off into the void. Then he sees something, something  which doesn't change his mind but convinces him to postpone the final act for a moment.  

What he sees I can't tell you.  And what happens next, well, that is a clever and satisfying resolution. 

Shooting for Harvard, by Jeff Soloway

 

"Shooting for Harvard," by Jeff Soloway, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2026.

This is Soloway's second appearance in this column.  

It is not unusual for private eye stories to contain social commentary, going back at least to Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest, with its examination of a corrupt mining town.

This is a story about people who have moved to Iowa.  The narrator, nameless as far as I can tell, was a cop but after he got 20 years he retired and followed his ex-wife to her home state to be close to his teenage daughter, Sam.  

He is hired by the Crovens (a great name), a family who moved to Iowa for a different reason: they want their son Stanley to get into Harvard and since that university wants students from every state, Iowa is a better bet than more populated states with more competitive high schools.

Unfortunately someone shot at Stanley and, perhaps accidentally, injured his hand.  The Crovens suspect Billy Haidt, whose family moved to the same Iowa town for the same reason.  These rival families are not charming people.  Here is Billy's mother meeting our hero:

"You innocent. You child. You cop. The game, my friend, is geographic diversity.  Make me some coffee."

The search for truth leads in surprising directions and ends with the best last sentence I've read in quite a while.

Lest We Forget, by Marilyn Todd

 

"Lest We Forget," by Marilyn Todd, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2026.

This is Marilyn Todd's third appearance in this column. 

 Repeating myself: Stories I like best tend to have at least one of four characteristics: great characters, twist ending, heightened language, or great premise.  Todd has come up with a great premise.

We are all familiar with that question: Do you remember where you were when (some event, usually tragic) happened?  And of course, we do.

This story is told entirely in connection to that kind of day.  It begins on 9/11/2001 when Amber, age 12, comes home after hearing the horrible news about the terrorist attack only to find her mother murdered in the kitchen.  It appears to be a botched hostage situation because bank video shows her father emptying their accounts to try to pay a ransom.  His car is eventually found, torched, but he never is.

We see Amber growing up, a traumatized  orphan, in scenes linked to Princess Margaret's death, the Columbia disaster, and so on. We're rooting for her to find stability and happiness, against high odds...

I suspected how this excellent story would end (hey, I read a lot of shorts) but that didn't keep me from enjoying it thoroughly. 

The Texas Chain-Store Manager, by Josh Pachter

"The Texas Chain-Store Manager," by Josh Pachter, in Crimeucopia: A Coterie of Dicks, edited by John Connor, Murderous Ink Press, 2026.

 This is the second story to get reviewed here by my friend  Josh Pachter, not counting the many he has edited in various anthologies. 

Let's start with the title: Bravo.  Don't you wish you had thought of it? 

Helmut Erhard is a semi-retired private eye in a small Texas town, and he has appeared in several of Pachter's previous stories.  In this one he is hired by the manager of a large grocery store. It has just opened and they are alr4eady having trouble with that dreaded retail problem, shrinkage, alias theft.  In this case someone is sticking labels from inexpensive products on costly items, paying the lower price and then returning it for the full price.

Erhard has three days to work in the store fourteen hours a day and figure out what's going on.  This is one of those stories where you see what our hero sees and should be able to figure out what he does (theoretically) , but the trick is how he gathers his evidence. Whether you guess what he's up to or not you will have fun  on the ride.  

Skeleton Crew, by V.G. Burke

 

"Skeleton Crew," by V.G. Burke, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, January/February 2026.

First stories seldom make this list but Burke's did.  

Our protagonist is a guy named Road, a veteran who saw too much and isn't sure he can live with it.  Or that he wants to.  A fellow vet named Sophie tries to keep him from taking a permanent way out, and Road owes her something.  

In Savannah, Georgia he meets a cop, another veteran, who tells Road that what he needs to keep him going  is a mission.  He finds one in a bar: HAVE YOU SEEN DAVID GRANT? A popular habitue of the joint, a genuine nice guy, has vanished.  And Road may still have the skills to track him.  

The story gets pretty brutal.    If it wasn't in EQMM's Department of First Stories it could have worked in their Black Mask Department.

I wish the story had been more tightly edited.  For example, there were a few spots where I couldn't tell who was speaking.  But it's a very enjoyable tale.   

Half-Empty City, by Jodie Snyder

 "Half-Empty City," by Jodie Snyder, in More Trouble in Tucson, Eva Eldridge, 3Sides2, 2026.

It's nice when we can occasionally escape from murder plots and heist capers.

The narrator of this story, nameless I think, is a survivor of domestic violence, now living in her car.  But that's not an option in Tucson in the summer.  She breaks into a home in a  wealthy neighborhood where almost all the residents have vanished to cooler climes.

So she is a criminal, but one with ethics.  She does not damage the house and steals nothing but food and, technically, electricity. The home gives her the breathing space to find a job and things seem to be looking up but two people are taking an unfortunate amount of interest in her.

One is Hank, the sweet elderly neighbor who assumes she belongs in the house.  The other is a co-worker named Tyler who she recognizes as the same kind of bully she ran away. A guy who won't take no for an answer.

Can she solve these problems?  You will have fun finding out. 

Solstice Sigil, by Laframboise, Michèle.

 "Solstice Sigil," by Michèle. Laframboise,  in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, January/February 2026. 

A lot of good stories in this issue, I must say.  Copy-editing, not so much.

I have read a lot of mysteries set in ancient Rome.  Most of them feature protagonists who have a properly cynical and noirish sentiment about the eternal city but have no doubt that Rome is and deserves to be the ruler of the world.  The best thing about this story is it's refreshing counterpoint to that view.

Our protagonist is a Nubian slave and former gladiator but before that he fought for the army of Carthage. To say he has no love of this city is an understatement.  "Latin was a strange dialect, with the words changing clothes..." he notes.  "Another stupid Roman custom," he grumbles later, and you will agree with him.   

It is Saturnalia, the holiday in which slaves are allowed great liberties.  Our hero (if his name is mentioned, I didn't catch it) has been drinking and gambling when he stumbles over a corpse.  When an army officer sees him near the body he figures he is doomed, but Publius is not a person who jumps to easy conclusions.

Realizing that failure to solve the murder will result in Publius's death (yet another stupid Roman custom) the slave reluctantly decides to help his former enemy out.  The result is a search through Subura, one of the city's nastiest slums.  

Very entertaining.