AHMM March / April Issue

I'm working my way through the latest issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, and enjoying excellent stories. Here's a quick rundown of my recent reads.

In Best Performance by Tom Savage, an aging actor fears his young wife and an overly-friendly doctor are planning his murder. Help comes from an unexpected ally, but first, he must give the performance of his life.

Lord, Spare the Bottom Feeders by Robert Mangeot features Vernon, a Tennessee lawyer of low repute. When he's banished from the local watering hole favored by legal professionals, Vernon encounters a dicey proposition from a "beer belly on legs" in a classless bar. Vernon takes a case that tests even his low standards.

The cover story is Night Train for Berlin by William Burton McCormick. Moller is a German ex-pat who has been publishing anti-Hitler articles from the presumed safety of Soviet Russia. The story opens with Moller on his way to a prisoner exchange - he's to be traded for a captive of the Nazis. It's a tricky political situation played out on a moving train. Moller, a committed communist, finds his life tied to that of an exiled Russian aristocrat.

In The Botanist by Joan Druett, Wiki Coffin is asked to prevent the murder of a prosperous businessman turned amateur botanist. Wiki is the half-Maori son of a Yankee ship's captain, and fits in as a sailor in Java. He finds that keeping tabs on the energetic scientist is difficult, considering the man is convinced someone is out to kill him.

All fun reads! And I have half a dozen more stories to go. 

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