Andrew Welsh-Huggins

End of the Road

Robert E. Howard

Murray Leinster

Johnston McCulley

Randall Garrett

B.M. Bower

Darrell Schwetizer

Steve Liskow

Hal Charles

In our 89th issue, Michael Bracken pulls double duty to bring a pair of original mysteires to readers: great tales by Steve Liskow and Welsh-Huggins. Plus we have a crime novel by Johnston McCulley (who also created Zorro—but he tried his hand at a bunch of other heroes and antiheroes, among them The Scarlet Scourge, The Avenging Twins, and a ton of others). There’s also a novel by Western author B.M. Bower. Plus a solve-it-yourself mystery by Hal Charles. On the science fiction & fantasy side, we have classic tales by Randall Garrett and Murray Leinster, two favorites. Robert E. Howard (much on my mind since returning from our trip to Robert E. Howard Days in Cross Plains, Texas) has a Solomon Kane adventure. And last (but far from least) we begin the serialization of Darrell Schweitzer’s amazing Sekenre: The Book of the Sorcerer, a series of linked short stories that come together to form a novel…though each tale also manages to stand on its own. The first 3 stories are in this issue. Here’s this issue’s complete lineup: Mysteries / Suspense / Adventure: “Nose for News,” by Steve Liskow [Michael Bracken Presents short story] “The Case of the Burgled Bushels,” by Hal Charles [Solve-It-Yourself Mystery] “Supply Chains,” by Andrew Welsh-Huggins [Michael Bracken Presents short story] The Voice at Johnnywater, by B.M. Bower [novel] The Scarlet Scourge, by Johnston McCulley [novel] Science Fiction & Fantasy: “Needler,” by Randall Garrett [novella] “Rattle of Bones,” by Robert E. Howard [short story] “Ribbon in the Sky,” by Murray Leinster [novella] Sekenre: The Book of the Sorcerer, by Darrell Schwetizer [serial book, part 1 of 4]

Black Cat Weekly #89

Private investigator Andy Hayes takes the assignment against his better judgment. In 1979, a high-profile burglar shot a cop, was apprehended, and then disappeared without ever being prosecuted. Forty years later, after the wounded cop’s suicide, his son, Preston Campbell, is convinced there’s been a cover-up that allowed his father’s attacker to go free. At first, Hayes dismisses Campbell’s outlandish conspiracy theories. But when a mysterious Cold War connection to the burglar emerges, the investigation heats up, and Hayes discovers a series of deaths that seem to be connected, one way or another, to the missing criminal. Nothing seems to add up, though, and Hayes finds himself hurtling headlong down a decades-old path of deadly secrets. In the midst of cracking the cold case, Hayes has another mystery to solve closer to home: What’s been troubling his younger son, Joe, and why is his ex-wife so eager to have the boy out of her house? Further complicating matters, Hayes learns that another private eye, the captivating but inscrutable Hillary Quinne, is also on the trail of the vanished burglar and needs Hayes’s help. As their professional and personal lives blur, Hayes wonders what he’s gotten himself into, and whether he really wants out.

An Andy Hayes Mystery

An Empty Grave

Lisa Black

Tom Barlow

Brian Silverman

Robert Pope

Drew Buxton

Sara Garland

TJ Staneart

William Wilcox

Our 240 page Issue No12, Winter 2020 edition of Mystery Tribune is a must-have featuring Tom Barlow, Lisa Black, Drew Buxton, Sara Garland, Robert Pope, Brian Silverman, and more. Winter 2020 features: A curated collection of short fiction including stories by Tom Barlow, Lisa Black, Drew Buxton, Sara Garland, Robert Pope, Brian Silverman, TJ Staneart, Andrew Welsh-Huggins, and William Wilcox. Interviews and Reviews by Andrea Bartz, Hector Acosta, Tobias Carroll, and Charles Perry. Art and Photography by Chantal Convertini, Karen Jerzyk, Joël Sanguinetti and more. This issue also features a preview of the new graphic novel Bloodborne Volume 4: The Veil, Torn Asunder by Ales Kot (Author) and Piotr Kowalski (Illustrator). NY Times Bestselling author Reed Farrel Coleman has called Mystery Tribune “a cut above” and mystery grand masters Lawrence Block and Max Allan Collins have praised it for its “solid fiction” and “the most elegant design”. An elegantly crafted quarterly issue, with a beautiful layout designed for optimal reading experience, our Winter 2020 issue will make a perfect companion or gift for avid mystery readers and fans of literary crime fiction.

Winter 2020

Mystery Tribune / Issue No12

Gabriel García Marquez's Cien Años de Soledad, Günter Grass' Die Blechtrommel, and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon

Magic Realism as Epic Narrative

One day in 2002, three friends — a Somali immigrant, a Pakistan–born U.S. citizen, and a hometown African American — met in a Columbus, Ohio coffee shop and vented over civilian casualties in the war in Afghanistan. Their conversation triggered an investigation that would become one of the most unusual and far–reaching government probes into terrorism since the 9/11 attacks. Over several years, prosecutors charged each man with unrelated terrorist activities in cases that embodied the Bush administration’s approach to fighting terrorism at home. Government lawyers spoke of catastrophes averted; defense attorneys countered that none of the three had done anything but talk. The stories of these homegrown terrorists illustrate the paradox the government faces after September 11: how to fairly wage a war against alleged enemies living in our midst. Hatred at Home is a true crime drama that will spark debate from all political corners about safety, civil liberties, free speech, and the government’s war at home.

al-Qaida on Trial in the American Midwest

Hatred at Home

"No Winners Here Tonight "explores the history of the death penalty and the question of its fairness through the experience of a single state, Ohio, which, despite its moderate midwestern values, has long had one of the country s most active death chambers. Andrew Welsh-Huggins s work is the only comprehensive study of the history of the death penalty in Ohio. His analysis concludes that the current law, crafted by lawmakers to punish the worst of the state s killers, doesn t come close to its intended purpose and instead varies widely in its implementation. This exploration of the law of capital punishment and its application will appeal to students of criminal justice as well as those with an interest in law and public policy. "

Race, Politics, and Geography in One of the Country's Busiest Death Penalty States

No Winners Here Tonight

It’s a violent encounter that private investigator Andy Hayes could have done without. One minute he’s finishing up some grocery shopping ahead of a custody visit with his sons. The next, he must come to the rescue of a Somali-American mother and her young children as anti-immigrant bullies torment them. Grateful for his intervention, the Somali community hires Andy to find a missing teenager who vanished without a trace and is now accused of plotting a terror attack in his adopted hometown of Columbus, Ohio. The government is certain that nineteen-year-old Abdi Mohamed followed in the footsteps of his brother, who died in Syria a few months earlier in a jihadi assault. But Mohamed’s family isn’t convinced, describing a soccer-loving American kid who renounced his brother’s actions and planned to attend college in the fall and become a diplomat someday. Soon Andy is fending off fed-up FBI agents and dueling with a mysterious foe with links to the white supremacist movement. As he draws ever closer to the truth behind Mohamed’s disappearance, Hayes stumbles onto a conspiracy that could put hundreds of lives in danger, including his own two boys.

The Third Brother

The job seems easy enough at first for private investigator Andy Hayes: save his client’s reputation by retrieving a laptop and erasing a troublesome video from its hard drive. But that’s before someone breaks into Andy’s apartment in Columbus; before someone else, armed with a shotgun, relieves him of the laptop; and before the FBI suddenly shows up on his doorstep asking questions. Soon, there’s a growing list of people with a claim on the computer, all of them with secrets they don’t want uncovered. When one of those people ends up dead, Andy has his hands full convincing authorities he’s not responsible, while trying to figure out who is — and who’s got the laptop — before someone else dies. Soon the trail leads to the last place Andy wants to go: back to Ohio State University, where few have forgiven him for a mistake he made two decades earlier in his days as the Buckeyes’ star quarterback. That misjudgment sent him on a downward spiral that cost him a playing career, two marriages, several wrecked relationships, and above all his legacy in Ohio’s capital city, where the fortunes of the OSU team are never far from people’s minds. As Andy tracks a laptop and a killer from the toniest of the city’s suburbs to its grittiest neighborhoods, he must confront a dark figure from his past and prove that this time he won’t drop the ball.

Fourth Down and Out

Andrew Welsh-Huggins

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