The Mystery of Sea and Sky, by Charles John Harper

 "The Mystery of Sea and Sky," by Charles John Harper, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, May/June 2026

This is the second story by this author to be reviewed here, if C.J. Harper is who I think he is. This story is a lot cuddlier than that other one.

Although our protagonist would hate be called cuddly. Skyler's a fifteen-year-old kid with all the grumpiness  and mood swings you'd expect.  Worse, his mother has flown him from their home in beautiful California to Minneapolis to meet "my thousand-year-old British-- or was it Irish? -- grandfather. A boomer so cringe?"

Seamus, the boomer in question, is a private eye and he's especially glad to meet his grandson that day because his assignment is to find a fifteen-year-old  girl and he figures Skyler has a better chance of figuring out where the girl would go.

And Skyler, with alternating moods of reluctance and enthusiasm, does figure out the vital clue.  It's a fun story. 

Icarus

icarus
Originally uploaded by werewegian

“Icarus” by C.J. Harper. March/April 2011, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

When music professor James Enright loses his wife and daughter in a tragic accident at a bridge it changes his view of fate and the universe. A few months later he starts to have visions of people who have fallen or been thrown off bridges to their death – and the visions are true. Has he been blessed/cursed with psychic powers or is something even worse happening?

I’m not crazy about the plot of this story but I love the language, especially the way Enright links his environment to his agonized feelings. Take this description of his new neighborhood, the Mill District:

Many of these mills exploded from the grain dust that had built up inside them. Destroyed by their own unstable breath. By an unforeseen byproduct of their own existence.

Some of them were rebuilt. Others were left as rubble.

A place of rebirth and ruin.

That is why I moved here.

I knew I’d fit in.

One way or the other.