Where there is affection or loyalty, there is the potential for betrayal. And when a crime involves a victim, their pain will be compounded when betrayal is involved, whether it be of trust, of confidence, or of duty. But while crime may often mean letting someone down, as chronicled by many of the stories in this issue, you can always trust AHMM to provide exciting and satisfying reading. 

Betrayal within a family may cut the deepest, as an attorney with a drinking problem exemplifies in Eve Fisher’s “The Closing of the Lodge.” Meanwhile, a trusted aunt’s good deed backfires in Janice Law’s “The Nephew,” while ending a family legacy is a fraught decision is Dayle A. Dermatis’s “Thicker Than Syrup But Not as Sweet.” 

Disco Is Dead
by Jeffrey Marks 

My lust for Agatha Christie drove me to a summer job at Norman’s Skateland.

Agatha Christie had died two years before, and I was snapping up her books as fast as I could with the miserable salary of $2.10 an hour. I never understood how the rink could ignore the minimum wage, but the skaters told me that the father and son who ran the place had Mob connections, maybe with some drug dealing on the side.

So the summer I was sixteen, instead of reading the latest mystery, I stood behind the counter at the skate rental and listened to Evelyn “Champagne” King sing “Shame” for the sixth time that evening. The rental counter had a rush when the doors opened and a half hour before the rink closed. The rest of the time, we were expected to clean or wait for the skaters’ demands. READ MORE

Finale
by Pamela Blackwood

In another four weeks, the playground would not be an option. Even now, in late September, the nights were getting cool and he woke up stiff and achy. It was getting dark earlier now, so he could prowl public places, looking for his bedroom of the evening, without being detected. Tonight he had smelled something interesting in the Dumpster outside the school cafeteria. Later, in the fall and winter, the aromas from the Dumpsters would not be so detectable. He had grown accustomed to the smell of rot, but where there was rot, there was sure to be good food rejected by the students of Rosewood School, The Fighting Tigers, Est. 1972, as he had read on the sign outside the school entrance. He had scoped the place out on walks into and out of town—it was the only school near downtown, a place he found too claustrophobic after dark. The school had food, after a fashion, shelter, and isolation. The residence-challenged could hardly ask for more. READ MORE