From The Editor

Welcome to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine!

In its almost eighty-five years of continuous publication, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine has had only four editors: Frederic Dannay, Eleanor Sullivan, Janet Hutchings, and me. It goes (almost) without saying that this is an incredible honor and a duty I don’t take lightly. During my long tenure as managing editor for EQMM and her sister magazine Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, I grew to experience the pride of purpose that comes with working on such a respected and historically significant title, and I am thrilled to be introducing myself to you now as EQMM’s newest editor.

Many of you know me already—indeed, the first things I learned about the mystery-fiction community fifteen years ago were its kindness and generous spirit. My close working relationship with EQMM’s fans, friends, and departing editor Janet Hutchings prepared me for this role, and I can’t wait to see where we all go together next.

I refer often to Fred Dannay’s address from the first issue of the magazine (fall 1941), as did my estimable predecessor—so, it’s not difficult for me to pick up the baton of core principles that gave EQMM its foundation: “quality publication devoted exclusively to the printing of the best in detective-crime short-story literature”; “some of the finest stories have been . . . or are now being written by lesser-known writers or . . . writers not known to the general public at all”; and, my favorite, “this first issue is frankly experimental.”

Dannay mentions in his editorial that he didn’t expect guaranteed success with his new idea (“a book rather than a magazine,” containing every type of mystery fiction, from award-winning big-name authors to emerging authors), and now, in a time of change and general upheaval, this salute toward the magazine’s yet to be tested endurance is an encouraging and exciting reminder of the possibilities ahead. We have changes here as well—you’ll know by now that EQMM (along with longtime stablemates AHMM, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, and Asimov’s Science Fiction) is now part of a brand new publishing group, 1 Paragraph.

My deep hope is that readers will continue to be entertained by and gain something from reading the work here—and each issue as a whole—as we explore together the mysteries around us. Everything is a mystery, and crime writers have a way of sensing out justice—and injustice. These are important stories, and I am exhilarated to be at this time their steward.

—Jackie Sherbow