The World's Finest Mystery... by Ed Gorman

Fall 1999
     
     
    BARRY AWARDS 2000
Voted on by subscribers of Deadly Pleasures magazine
     
     
Best Novel: Peter Robinson, In A Dry Season
     
     
Best First Novel: Donna Andrews, Murder With Peacocks
     
     
Best British Crime Novel: Val McDermid, A Place Of Execution
     
     
Best Paperback Original: Robin Burcell, Every Move She Makes
     
     
    MYSTERY MAGAZINES 2000
One of the most popular ways mystery fans keep up with what is going on in the field is by subscribing to one or more mystery magazines. The most popular of the current fan magazines are:
     
     
Drood Review , published bi-monthly for a yearly cost of $17.00. Articles and reviews in a newsletter format. 484 E. Carmel Dr., #378, Carmel, IN 46032 or order at www.droodreview.com.
     
     
Mystery News , published bi-monthly for a yearly cost of $20.00. Newspaper format includes cover interview, columns, articles, many reviews and a listing of current and upcoming books. Black Raven Press, PMB 152, 262 Hawthorn Village Commons, Vernon Hills, IL 60061 or order at www.blackravenpress.com.
     
     
Mystery Readers International Journal , published quarterly for a yearly cost of $24.00. Each issue treats a mystery theme. Calendar year 2001 will feature New England Mysteries, Partners in Crime, Oxford, and Cambridge. P.O. Box 8116, Berkeley, CA 94707 or order at www.mysteryreaders.org.
     
     
Mystery Scene , published five times a year for a yearly cost of $32.00. Eighty-eight pages of articles and reviews. Heavy emphasis on author contributions. 3601 Skylark Lake SE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52403.
     
     
Deadly Pleasures , published quarterly, for a yearly cost of $14.00. Eighty pages of articles, reviews, news, and regular columns, including the popular Reviewed to Death column. P.O. Box 969, Bountiful, UT 84011 or order at www.deadlypleasures.com.
     
     
    CHANGING OF THE MYSTERY GUARD 2000
Each year the mystery fiction genre experiences a changing of the guard. Longtime mystery fans mourn the deaths of some of the old guard and celebrate the arrival of some very talented newcomers. The year 2000 saw the passing of Sarah Caudwell, Robert W. Campbell, Duncan Kyle, Lucille Fletcher, Elizabeth Lemarchand, Patricia Moyes, Roger Longrigg (known to most by one of his three pen names, Ivor Drummond, Frank Parrish, or Domini Taylor) and Miles Tripp. And it saw the first novels published by future stars Stephen Horn, Mo Hayter, David Liss, Scott Phillips, Bob Truluck, Sheldon Siegel, Qiu Xiaolong and Glynn Marsh Alam.
     
     
     
    Kristine Kathryn Rusch
    Spinning
KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH has spent most of her professional life working in the fields of science fiction and fantasy. She has also done significant editing in those fields, most notably as the previous editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. And then she became a crime-fiction writer. Like that. Suddenly, suspense stories bloomed from that contraption on her desk just as science fiction once had. And what stories they've been. Last year, under the name Kris Nelscott, she debuted her first crime series with the novel A Dangerous Road . We're pleased to present two of the several of her stories published this year. First, "Spinning," which appeared in the July issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and may be her best story yet.
     
     
     
    Spinning
    Kristine Kathryn Rusch
M idway through that first awful class— when the clock above the mirrors said she had only been on the stationary bike for twenty-two minutes, but her body told her she had been on it for 2.2 days, when she thought her heart was going to burst through her chest like a creature out of the movie Alien , when sweat poured off her in rivers, and her breath came in deep honking gasps— midway through all of that, Patricia bent her head, saw the flab on her thighs go up while her actual legs went down, and heard Tom, her instructor, call over the rock music:
     
     
"Good. Real good. Excellent. Keep going. Wonderful. Hmmm. You'll get it.