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... 

  

 

The Search for Eric Garcia, by E.A. Aymar

 "The Search for Eric Garcia," by E.A. Aymar, in Midnight Hour, a Chilling Anthology of Crime Fiction From 20 Authors of Color, edited by Abby L. Vandiver, Crooked Lane Books, 2021

I  am not a big fan of stories told in the second person, as I have mentioned the, um, four other times one of them has made it onto this page.  But Aymar makes this one work very well.

You're sitting at the bar, thinking about choices.

The protagonist's life is going down the tubes.  His daughter died in an accident that he feels responsible for, although the authorities disagreed.  

His wife is living with Eric Garcia, who owns the store where our hero works.  Eric is everything he is not: a confident, successful man.  And our protagonist feels that the world isn't big enough to hold both of them.

This is a very clever story, one where the telling is as essential as the plot.  I do think it has some rough edges.  If I were the editor I would have asked Aymar to polish a few of them harder.  But this is a terrific piece of work.