GREAT EXPECTATIONS? by John M. Floyd The other day I received two Netflix envelopes on the same day. It’s always fun when that happens; the only thing better is when I receive three. Anyhow, these were two crime/suspense movies, In Bruges and Dolan’s Cadillac, and I was looking forward to them both — the first […]

TURNING OVER OLD LEAVES by Steven Steinbock I’ve been looking through some of my old issues of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (EQMM). Periodically over the next weeks or months I’ll take a close look at some of these and use this space to share with you what I find. This week I’m looking at the […]

THE SALAD DAYS by Deborah Elliott-Upton We’re going to a backyard barbecue tonight and I’m asked to bring potato salad. The first time I remember taking it for a crowd was at a beach party by the seawall of the North China Sea on Okinawa. All the soldiers were young in both years and rank. […]

NO PLACE FOR AMATEURS by Rob Lopresti I opened the latest Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and the lead story was by Clark Howard. The editorial note reported that he has been “a professional writer for more than forty years.” Well, yes. I thought. Very professional he is. But that’s not what you meant. And that […]

Rob Lopresti suggested that his friend Nina Mansfield contribute a piece, and here it is. She modestly writes of herself in the third person: “Nina Mansfield is a Connecticut based writer and teacher. Her fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and The Chick Lit Review. Her YA mystery novel Swimming Alone was a […]

SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN by James Lincoln Warren “Brevity,” ironically quoth Polonius (Hamlet, Act I scene ii), perhaps the most voluble windbag in all of literature, “is the soul of wit.” And as this website is called Criminal Brief, the Gentle Reader may excuse me for being uncharacteristically succinct this week. A lot of advice […]

4th of July by Leigh Lundin The rockets red glare… The bombs bursting in air… What a tempting backdrop for a crime story! As I started a very different column for today, my mind switched to another track: I realized I couldn’t identify a single Fourth of July mystery story, not one. I could think […]