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.

The Tattle-Tale Heart, by John Leonard Pielmeier

 

"The Tattle-Tale Heart," by John Leonard Pielmeier, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, January/February 2026. 

Hoo-boy. Sometimes the challenge of reviewing a short story is figuring out what you can say without spoilers. Pardon me if I get vague for readers' protection.

It is 1960 and Eleanor Morse, a widow, has just taken a Caribbean cruise at the recommendation of her friend Harry.  Now back in Altoona she opens her suitcase and finds a horrifying surprise. 

 Which leaves her - and us - with a lot of questions.  Who put it there? How, why, and when?  And, come to think of it, why is Eleanor so reluctant to tell the police about her friend Harry?

The answers are surprising and, in some cases, audacious. And that's all I will say about the plot.

But after I finished the story I found myself trying to reverse engineer the plot. Specifically why did this story need to be a historical? What tied the plot to the past?  

I thought of a few details that probably fit 1960 better than 2026, like the scientific element of the investigation, and Eleanor's determined personality does stand out more in those pre-liberation days. But then I remembered that we are told about an incident in her childhood and, oh yes, that works best with the time period.

I'll shut up now.  Go read the story. It's a good one.

Glass Beach, by Michael Bracken

 

"Glass Beach," by Michael Bracken, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, January/February 2026.

This is the twelfth appearance in this space by my friend and fellow SleuthSayer.  

One of my favorite mystery stories is "Witch's Money," by John Collier.  In spite of the title it does not involve the supernatural, but tells how a small European village is turned inside out by the arrival of a (relatively) wealthy American. Bracken's story reminds me of Collier's.

The story takes place near Fort Bragg, California in the early 1970s.  The witch's money in this case is a strongbox full of cash, the loot from the robbery of a lumber company payroll a decade earlier. It is discovered in a dump by Patrick, our teenage narrator, and his fairly hostile stepfather Cush.

They hope to keep the find secret but, inevitably, the ripples start to spread, involving first Patrick's best friend, whose mother works at a bank and knows how difficult will be to  make the money safe to spend.  As complications arise and more people get involved our heroes discover just how difficult easy money can be.  

Terrific story. 

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  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.

The Canadian: Death by the Barrel, by J.F. Benedetto

"The Canadian: Death by the Barrel," by J.F. Benedetto, in Black Cat Weekly, #226, 2025. 

This is the second story in this series to make my Best Of pile.

It is a neat historical tale full of, but not overwhelmed by, details of place and people.

It is 1901 and in the wake of the Boxer Rebellion a dozen western powers control Tientsin, China. Our hero is a former Canadian Mounted Police officer, also a veteran of the war.  He happens to be near by when a Dutch sea captain is found drowned i n a barrel of his own beer in his rooms in the British quarter.  

The Englishman investigating the crime is an old enemy who would love to blame it on the Canadian so he has to get to the bottom of things more complicated than the bottom of a beer barrel.  It turns out that the sea captain is anything but an innocent sailor and the story makes some clever twists and turns.

Level Up, by Shawn Reilly Simmons

 "Level Up," by Shawn Reilly Simmons in The Most Dangerous Games, edited by Deborah Lacy, Level Short, 2025.

 I have a story in this book.

 This is the third appearance in this column for Simmons.

Natalie is a PhD student in Medieval Literature.  No surprise then that she is in desperate financial straits.  The big surprise is when she receives an invitation from DARE+ that begins:

Congratulations! You've been selected for an exclusive opportunity to earn real money through fun challenges.  Based on your profile, you could earn up to $500 in your first week. Interested? 

Interested, sure.  Skeptical, absolutely. What kind of scam is this?

The first challenge is, yes, easy, and the money arrives as promised.  But after the first bite of the apple things always get complicated, don't they?

A nicely suspenseful story that heads in a direction I did not expect. 

The God You Save May Be Your Own, by Michael Thomas Ford

 "The God You Save May Be Your Own," by Michael Thomas Ford, in Black Cat Weekly, 224, 2025.

Every December brings us a Christmas-themed fantasy mystery or two.  Most of them center on Santa Claus, logically enough.  This one, not so much.

The narrator is the mayor of New Orleans liaison.  Liaison with who, you ask logically enough. But in this case it's more of a what then a who.

Poppy is an Elder God (think Lovecraft's world) who has dwelled in NOLA for over a century.  She manifests as a nine-year-old girl but in her real form is somewhat more tentacle-y.

As the story begins someone has killed and dismembered the mayor.  Someone may be trying to frame Poppy.  Or maybe something even more diabolical is going on.

A very entertaining tale.  The funniest line is the only reference to Lovecraft, which I won't spoil for you.