Michael Gilbert opens the issue with "Dangerous Game", a part of his Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens series of stories. When a man is found burned to death, the two British Intelligence men need to find not just what happened but why - the ex-soldier had been helping them deal with problems from across the border in Ireland. The cat and mouse game slowly reveals buries secrets until the very end. The end was fitting the crime in a way you know cannot work in the real life but still works in spy stories..

William Brittain adds another series story: "Mr. Strang Interprets a Picture", featuring the high school science teacher Leonard Strang who really dislikes his current assignment - visiting the elementary schools which are feeding his school with students. Meanwhile, the local bank had been robbed a few days earlier - and the police have no clues. The two events may not connect on the surface but kids always see more than they know (and more than people think they do) - even when they cannot really explain what they saw exactly.

John C. Boland's "Reunion in Baineville" is an almost predictable revenge story - once upon a time, the crooked local sheriff sent the protagonist to jail and now he is back. I am not sure I really liked the story (and I know I really disliked the protagonist).

Barbara Williamson's "Shadows in the Attic" could have been a lot better if we got any idea of why the action happened at that point and not years earlier. Even when someone snaps seemingly out of the blue, there is always an event that leads to it (or a string of them) and that was just not there in the story.

"Blackmail Boogie" by J. M. Kelly is the first of the two music-related stories in the issue. A musician who works as a PI to make ends meet is asked to help a fellow player - and manages to dispense some musical advice in addition to solving his other issues. It is a nice story but it went exactly where it was supposed to (but then not all stories can have surprising ends or they will stop being surprising).

The second music story ("The Cry of a Violin" by Seymour Shubin) has another musician as a narrator - this one with a place in a prestigious orchestra - who tells us that he is not jealous of the young musicians he plays with but isn't he actually? Unreliable narrator is nothing new in crime fiction but even with that in mind, this story really did not work for me.

Bill Pronzini gets us back to the late 1890s with "The Hanging Man". The titular victim seems to be unknown to the small town where he finds his death and the local deputies end up tracking his last movements to get to the truth. Of course, Pronzini does have an extra twist up his sleeve for the end of the story.

Ta Huang Chi stays in the past with "The Vanished Ships". In 1925, ships seems to disappear in calm seas - they just never arrive where they are supposed to and noone ever hears of them. Until the officer of one of the missing ships show up dead - and detective David Fang is asked to look into the issue. The author does a good job in working in enough details so the whole story does not get predictable.

The two first stories play on known tropes: Ronald S. Wilkinson's "The Way It Is" (the 581st) has a modern time PI who seem to have read a few more detective novels he should have - and never learned what he had to from them. Jim Flanagan's "Taps for Willie" (the 582nd) introduces us to a guy who can be a crook but he is definitely not stupid. From the two of them, I liked the second one a lot more.

Bryce Walton's "Chance for Freedom" is one of those stories where you are never sure if what you are seeing is what the reality is (but then what do you expect from the story about an actor in a mental institution).

The issue is closed by stories by 3 of the big names of the genre (or ones which are still/already big names in 2022 anyway):
- The Peter Lovesey reprint (the 1973 "The Bathroom" from the Winter’s Crimes 5 anthology, here under the title "A Bride in the Bath") has a book of true crime stories and a woman who thinks she got what she wanted. It is a nicely crafted story if a bit predictable.
- Lawrence Block's non-series story "Going Through the Motions" is a story I had read before and is one of these stories which relies on the twist at the end. A girl is abducted and her father reaches to his best friend for help. Reading the story after I knew how it ends made me see how Block hinted and led to the solution without revealing it though so I am glad I reread it even after I recognized it.
- The obligatory Edward D. Hoch story is a Nick Velvet one: "The Theft of the Red Balloon". Nick gets way over his head as usual. I like the whole series about Velvet and that is one of the calm stories in it (despite things exploding).

The usual non-fiction completes the issue as usual - the first part of the Gilbert interview (completed in the next issue), an appreciation essay for the actress Barbara Stanwyck, the forthcoming books and conventions notes and the Jon L. Breen review column (I've heard of just one of the books reviewed...).The poetry is in the form of the short and cheeky detectiverses which are always a delight (and there were a lot of them).

A nice issue overall. ( )