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.