"Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."
Sir Walter Scott

"Web Mystery Magazine is extremely proud to present this issue ... featuring columns such as Dr. Anil Aggrawal's "Forensic Files" and Ann Flaherty, P.I.'s "On the Case," Satish Sekar's investigative crime reporting, Antonia Moras' and Jeffery Ewener's insightful analyses of the collected works of Michael Dibden and Colin Watson respectively, reviews of novels as varied as The Clovis Incident and Havana World Series, as well as our regular column on pulp magazine history, the fourth issue of Web Mystery Magazine celebrates good research and good writing!

"The night of Friday January 5th began like many other Fridays nights, with friends enjoying a drink and some amphetamines, but ended in tragedy...

"It is a truly shocking story, involving deplorable methods to secure convictions, that highlights serious institutional failings throughout the criminal justice system of England and Wales."

"I have investigated thousands of cases over the course of my career, however there are always a few cases that stand out. For me, the case that still haunts me is the disappearance of Steven Bunch. You see, this is one of those cases I couldn’t solve ...

"Somebody out there knows what happened to Steven. A detective is only as good as the clues available, and the clues don’t add up here. Because of this, I couldn’t help a mom find her son.

Ann Flaherty, a licensed private investigator in the state of California with over 25 years' experience in the investigative field, is the owner of the R.D.D. Detective Agency and is a noted authority on missing persons, fraud, scams, and elder abuse. Her investigative expertise is sought after and highly respected.

"Michael Dibden’s Aurelio Zen novels offer many of the delights expected from a sustained series of mystery novels: the challenge of puzzles, piquancy of action, familiar characters, a certain atmosphere in a certain place. In this series the setting is Italy, and the lead character is an Italian police investigator whose career is based less on ratiocination than on more or less morally acceptable improvisation.

"The conspiratorial tangles of Italian politics -- the rumors, the games, the mirages, the corruption, the misteri d’Italia -- are always part of the background to Zen’s cases, but he himself is not a political player. He is a stranger in his own bureaucracy, in which he has survived almost in spite of himself. Dibdin is very good at catching the tone of bureaucratic languor -- the petty gossip, the rivalries, the thwarted creativity. Zen is detached, ironic, carrying a certain ingrained sadness -- still the boy who lost his father during World War II. Many of his police successes are flawed and temporary. Events happen around him and he responds as best he can. He’s not fashionable or trendy. He isn’t even always very clever."

"It's been twenty-two years since Colin Watson died. He was one of the most wildly funny writers England has produced. He was also a brilliant stylist, and an inventive and devious crafter of mysteries.

"He's been out of print for more than a decade. Even his single foray into non-fiction - his acclaimed social history of Golden Age mysteries and their readers, Snobbery with Violence - which was long available in a Mysterious Press edition, has lately been allowed to lapse into obscurity.

"A similar darkness enshrouds the man himself. There are no biographies, no critical examinations beyond a couple of character studies by the late Earl Bargainnier in the journal Clues, and not one doughboy or doughgirl in the army of Ph.D. students in EngLit, CrimeLit, or PopCult has seen fit to grind the man up into thesis mulch.

"Watson's original readers knew they were on to something good. He published a dozen novels between 1958 and 1982, to the accompaniment of an ever-expanding chorus of delighted reviewers."

"In first week of fall in 1958 the main thing on everyone’s mind was whether or not the Milwaukee Braves would be able to beat the New York Yankees for a second year in a row at the World Series. It was a clash of the titans... In Havana, the playground of Cuba, a different but equally riveting battle is being fought in Jose LaTour’s latest novel, Havana World Series.

"Meyer Lansky is raking in the dough with his hotels and casinos. The Battista regime in Cuba has been good for business - it has made the city a haven for the rich and decadent. But the Bonanno family syndicate in New York wants a piece of the pie, and Lanksy isn’t letting them in. So they send Mariano 'The Ox' Contreras into Cuba to organize a heist that will bring Lansky to his knees."

"Pocket genre books, albeit a self-coined phrase, are those that stick to the rules of their category like metal to magnets. Books like these are easy to review – linear, straightforward, predictable. Yet the secret, unyielding desire of all book reviewers is…a book that steps politely outside of these narrow confines. The Clovis Incident by Pari Noskin Taichert leaps, no, screams outside the box of sci-fi, and there’s absolutely nothing polite about it."

"I'm glad I did. It's an entertaining read."

New Books
by Web Mystery Magazine Writers

Spring is blooming!

New books by Web Mystery Magazine contributors include Knee Deep by Lisa Polisar, Island of Bones by P.J. Parrish, and Beginner's Luck by Cheryl Ritzel.

"No, it's not terribly scientific ... but it's fun ... and the information you share with Rosalie will be used for nothing more than to try to figure out what the readers of the Web Mystery Magazine enjoy reading."

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"Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."
Sir Walter Scott