Review: Mystery Weekly Magazine: December 2019

Mystery Weekly Magazine: December 2019 opens with “Peat” by Fredrick Highland. It is September at Wycherly’s on the Moor and Mr. Seefeldt has finally seen off the last group of travelers. Peace and quiet has returned to the inn after an incredible turn of events that brought many people thanks to the tabloid coverage. Nothing like finding an ancient and mostly intact corpse out in the bog. The other corpse out there might not be so ancient.

Readers move from the moor to the flat and desolate West Texas landscape of Sweetwater in “The West Texas Rookie” by Vicki Weisfeld. Our narrator is a rookie reporter by the name of Brianna Yamato who is assigned the recent case of four deaths in a home. An elderly couple as well as two younger folks. Basically, it is being defined as a murder/suicide incident by the local police force which are less than competent. For the rookie reporter suck covering boring zoning commission meetings, the story seems more complicated than the easy answer and she doesn’t have all the emotional baggage of being a local.

“Robot Carson” by Robert Lopresiti tells the story of Mary and her interrogator, Police Robot Carson. If comes to her porch seeking information on a crime in the neighborhood. Except the house that the crime occurred was miles away from Mary’s place. Not that the location of her home is why the robot is there as becomes apparent as this story progress.

Corrine and Mitch were working the local park on the behalf of the Logos Shelter when they found the body on the park bench in “Exposure” by Stephen Couch. While finding the body is bad enough, the way he is presented is way worse. So too is the identity of the deceased. Those twin shocks of presentation and identity are the first of several in this cold tale.

Junior McClendon has a lot going on as “The Job Interview” by R. I. Lawton begins. He is eighteen, graduation is coming, and Mom is headed to Florida to live with the new boyfriend, and he is not welcome. He needs a paying job and he needed it yesterday, last week, etc. The job search has not been going well at all and time is running out to get some money. As he faces the new day, he begins to wonder if there is another way to get the money he needs.

“Rachel’s Place” by John M. Floyd comes next and totally occurs in a physical sense at her home. While the setting is her home, the tale reaches far outside her cozy small world. What has happened and what happens now could change everything for Rachel and those she knows.

An affair is always bad news and can make things complicated. That is certainly true here in “A Really Great Team” by Dennis Palumbo. This is not a tale that can even have the premise explained. Things get very complicated very fast and some folks must die for a variety of reasons.

The hit should have been simple and easy for Moran. It wasn’t and isn’t in “Taking Debbie Rabbit” by Ray Morrison. The last job was not as smooth as it should have been. Moran knows this one must go better as he arrives at the specified address of his target. Obviously, it won’t and therein lies the tale.

The “You-Solve-It” for this month is “A Minute To Murder” by Jack Bates. Elise Rupert, host of the weekly cooking segment on local television, Rupert’s Recipes, is very much dead on the floor of her studio kitchen. This is a problem to be solved by Sheriff Paige McConkey of Huron Country. Determining the identity of person that wielded the cast iron frying pan as a weapon is part of the problem.

The solution to the November 2019 “You-Solve-It” by Peter DiChellis titled “Disappearing Diamonds” brings the issue to a close.  

Mystery Weekly Magazine: December 2019 continues to honor the mission of this publication. That mission is to honor mystery in all its many forms. This is not a narrow-focused mystery magazine. As a result, futuristic technology, magic, and other elements are embraced at this publication and are certainly present to some level in this particular issue. Mystery Weekly Magazine: December 2019 is another very entertaining issue and well worth your time. 

For quite some time now I have been gifted a subscription by the publisher with no expectation at all of a review. I read and review each issue as I can. To date, I have never submitted anything to this market and will not do so as long as I review the publication.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2020