The 'Zine Scene

The latest Mystery Scene magazine includes a feature on author Donna Leon, who visited Venice as a young woman and fell passionately in love - with the city. For decades, this affair has played out for all to see in her Commissario Guido Brunetti novels, most recently Earthly Remains. Michael Mallory also has a retrospective of television writer Jackson Gillis who spent 40 years writing for shows from Perry Mason to Columbo to Murder, She Wrote; Craig Sisterson takes a look at Fergus Hume who had crime fiction's first global blockbuster ... 130 years ago; Lawrence Block returns with the second installment of his tutorial "How to be a Writer Without Writing Anything," and more.

"Diverse" is how Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine is describing its May/June 2017 issue, with stories running the thematic and atmosphere gamut of the crime and mystery field. There are historicals by Miriam Grace Monfredo and Marilyn Todd; Robert L. Fish Award winning author Zoë Z. Dean’s gritty "Charcoal and Cherry"; a mob tale by Robert S. Levinson; and stories set in Hawaii, Barcelona, the Jersey Shore, and Australia. The issue also contains the winners of the 2016 Readers Award.

Reviewer, editor, and author Elizabeth Foxwell also took a look at the "not so simple art" of mystery reviewing for the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine blog.

The latest issue of EQMM's sister publication, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, features "delights, dangers, and debuts," and is heavy on the humor among its twelve story offerings. Among the highlights are director/writer Paul D. Marks (author of White Heat and Vortex 2015) whose story "Twelve Angry Days" recalls the old Henry Fonda film, Twelve Angry Men, but with a very different outcome; Jason Half introduces one of his favorite mystery classics, "Daisy Bell" by Gladys Mitchell; Jeff Cohen’s nervous dad-to-be/proprietor of a comedy film theater, who has serious doubts about the hospital staff in "It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Girl!"; and there are tales featuring commuters, detectives, comedians, and more.

Crimespree Magazine's latest issue features Nick Petrie on the cover. Petrie is an American crime writer and the author of the war veteran Peter Ash series, and his first novel, The Drifter, was nominated for 2016 Edgar, International Thriller Writer and Barry awards for Best First Novel, and the 2016 Hammett Prize for Best Novel. Kristi Belcamino and Chris Holm are back with new columns this month, and there are the usual cornucopia of interviews and great articles.

The new story up at Spinetingler for May is "Liar’s Poker" by Craig Faustus Buck.

The latest (March / April 2017) Issue of Suspense Magazine celebrates crime short fiction and also has reviews, articles, and interviews with Faye Kellerman, Kelly Oliver, Greg Iles, Lisa Unger, and Daryl Wood Gerber. Also, Barry Lancet and Anthony Franze discuss writing with bestselling author Thomas Perry, and Dennis Palumbo writes about how to turn anxiety into creativity.

The new issue of Mystery Readers Journal: Midwestern Mysteries has so many articles, the publication had to increase its size to accommodate them all, starting off with the introductory essay by Lori Rader-Day, "Big Cities Have Nothing on The Mysterious Midwest." The two free online essays this month are "Home: It’s That Simple" by William Kent Krueger and "The Exotic Midwest" by Nancy Pickard.

Mysterical-E's spring issue has new short fiction by Barbara Kussow, Lyn Fraser, Phillip Thompson, Robert Watts Lamon, Garnet Blackwell, Sophia-Karin Psarras, Margaret Karmazin, John M. Floyd, and Jude Roy. New columns include Drewey Wayne Gunn's look at the Wayne Lonergan murder case of 1943–44 that later became the subject of numerous essays, books, and even stimulated the imaginations of several novelists; movie notes by Anita Page and Gerald So; Christine Verstraete interviewing authors Laura Childs and Terrie Farley Moran about their latest mystery, Crepe Factor; and bookseller Frances G. Thorsen talks about Golden Age crime's Grand Dames.

Yellow Mama magazine reported the sad deaths of two former contributors, writer/artist JD Sixsmith and writer Lela Marie de la Garza, and discussed some of their stories, one of which appears in the latest issue. Also featured is the disturbing "Confidential Report on the Disturbance at Big Echo" by NY newcomer William Squirrell, and noir god Richard Godwin’s chilling "Liars of the Laughing City," in addition to more fiction and poetry.

The new issue of Pulp Modern is a resurrection of the publication that ceased for a year due to decreasing sales. Volume Two, Issue One features fiction from multiple genres, including crime, horror, and science fiction by writers from Europe, Canada, the United States, Asia, and Australia who contribute a diverse selection of short stories. Editor Alec Cizak reminds readers that in order to help keeping issues coming, buy and review it on Amazon - You'll be rewarded with stories by Stephen Rogers, Mark Adam, Marc Fitch, Lucy Kiff, Calvin Demmer, Joseph Rubas, L.S. Engler, and Myke Edwards.
 
Mystery Weekly Magazine presents original short stories by the world's best-known and emerging mystery writers who span every imaginable subgenre, including cozy, police procedural, noir, whodunit, supernatural, hardboiled, humor, and historical mysteries. Stories in the May issue include new fiction by J.A. Becker, Anna Castle, Katie Ginger, Michael Mallory, Charles Roland, Jude Roy, and James Glass.