Dorothy L. Sayers was not only one of the best mystery writers of all time, she was also a religious, um, well, not to put too fine a point on it, zealot. She abandoned Lord Peter Wimsey in order to write Christian religious tracts. But her spiritual erudition bears an item of interest for us: […]

HABITUAL OFFENDERS by James Lincoln Warren Why have so many short story publications gone the way of all flesh? This isn’t a new phenomenon. It’s been happening gradually for several decades. When I was a kid, there were lots of short story magazines on the newsstands, and “slick” magazines regularly printed short fiction. Most of […]

DARK JUSTICE by Leigh Lundin This week, the Supreme Court reached a mind-boggling decision, an opinion more indicative of, say Iran, than a democratic people, a judgment that should offend conservatives and liberals alike. Led by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court held convicted prisoners do not have the right to DNA testing, even […]

McKNIGHT WORK by John M. Floyd Much has been said at this blog, both in columns and in comments, about how to write mystery fiction — short and long — and how to discover and rediscover works by authors who already do it well. Photo by Jerry Bauer I met one of those authors several […]

LONG MEMORIES by Steve Steinbock Storytellers have long memories. We are also expert at playing with our memories, combining and connecting our recollections, ideas, and observations to create new stories. Last week I wrote briefly about the new issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Among the stories in that issue is a haunting one by […]

SUMMER READING by Deborah Elliott-Upton The temperature gauge where I live proves even more than the calendar pages that summer has officially arrived. My family is enjoying a little downtime following the wedding. For the newlyweds, this meant a trip to Costa Rica. For my husband, it meant a weekend with the Cowboy Action Shooters […]

AND IN OTHER NEWS, BATMAN MUGGED A NUN by Rob Lopresti It has not been a great week for the forces of law and order, has it? One story after another has suggested we can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys without a scorecard, or at least an unsealed indictment. Here are the […]