Here’s the most famous Christmas short story of all time. It would be a crime not to reproduce it. –JLW THE GIFT OF THE MAGI by O. Henry One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the […]

MY FATHER’S VOICE by James Lincoln Warren It is Christmas Eve. I don’t think there is a day on the calendar more redolent of family for me than this one. I do not describe myself as a Christian, mind, because I can not believe in the historical truth of the miraculous, but this is not […]

The CHRISTMAS BOX by Leigh Lundin Every Christmas, my father gave my mother a box, the same box, a 10 inch (25 cm) cube with printed poinsettias. From their first Christmas together, my sentimental father saved the carton and each year he gave her a gift in that same box. That was one of several […]

Next Saturday, we welcome our newest column to Criminal Brief, “Mississippi Style” by the prolific and highly respected mystery short story author John M. Floyd. John and I had the honor to have both contributed to the May and June 1999 issues of AHMM, where our stories appeared back to back in each issue — […]

GREENE FOR DANGER by Steve Steinbock Left to right: Ed and Pat Hoch, Doug Greene, Steve Steinbock; Bouchercon 2002 Last week I said I’d use my weekly platform to tell how I met and came to be friends with the greatest advocate of the mystery short story since Ellery Queen. That man is Douglas Greene, […]

STRANGER THAN NONFICTION by Deborah Elliott-Upton Ireland, one of my writing buddies, decided she wanted to try her hand at fiction. A character popped into her head one night in the middle of her ritual hour-long bubble bath before bed. (Said bath is where she usually reads.) The character wouldn’t leave her alone, and she […]

LOST AND PROFOUND by Robert Lopresti We mystery writers are a very quotable bunch. Here are a few samples to demonstrate. “Books are like your children. They take nine months to write; the manuscript weighs six pounds and…you send them out into the world and hope that some day they’ll send back money.” -Edna Buchanan […]