Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 40, No. 6, June, 1995

Editor’s Notes by Cathleen Jordan

In 1995, the Mystery Writers of America celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the organization. As part of that celebration, last year MWA sponsored a “Golden Mysteries” short story contest with two divisions, one for new writers and one for those who had been previously published. Our readers may remember seeing the announcement of the contest in AHMM.

The winners have now been named, and we are glad to be able to bring you the three prize-winning stories in the new writers category.

First place went to Jacqueline Freimor for “Strangle, Strangle”; second place to Susan J. Pethick for “Crazy Carlos Picks a Winner”; third place to Chris Rogers for “Spare Change.”

Noted authors Clark Howard and Walter Satterthwait, along with this editor, were the contest judges for the new writers group of entries.

Ms. Freimor, a native New Yorker, is a medical editor and has an M.A. in anthropology from NYU. A second story, “The Essence of Arthur Polkowsky,” appeared last fall in Red Herring Mystery Magazine.

Ms. Pethick, who hails from San Diego, currently lives in Vancouver, Washington. Present occupation: Mom. (In addition to writing, of course.) Ms. Pethick was formerly a data systems analyst for the Space Systems Division of General Dynamics; her earlier jobs included managing a singing telegram company and being the lead singer in a rock and roll band.

Ms. Rogers, a Houstonian, mother of four, grandmother of seven, is an executive assistant who has published several nonfiction articles and co-authored two books. She tells us that she “wrote marketing materials for small businesses, tried magazine writing... but didn’t like it, then tried fiction and loved it. Still do.”

All the contest winners will be presented with cash prizes at the upcoming Edgar Week festivities in New York in April, during which time MWA holds its annual awards banquet.

The winners in the published writers category: Peter Lovesey, first place; Perri O’Shaughnessy, second place; and Susan B. Kelly, third place. The judges were author Edward D. Hoch and editors Sara Ann Freed (The Mysterious Press) and Janet Hutchings (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine). Those three stories can be found in the June issue of EQMM.

In the June 1993 issue of AHMM, we published a delightful narrative poem about an unwitting serial killer titled “King Jose’s Hobby” by Linda Paul. We are now pleased to report that King Jose’s further adventures are detailed in this issue as “King Jose’s Hobby, Part II.” If you missed the first one, don’t let that keep you from reading the second one: Ms. Paul will catch you up nicely.

Finally, we have two more new authors to introduce. Or rather one to introduce and one to reintroduce.

Dan Sontup, author of “Too Dumb to Steal,” a full-time writer and editor, has written about one hundred stories for a variety of magazines. His first sale was to EQMM in 1950; AHMM published one of his stories in 1962. Under the name David Saunders he wrote “M” Squad, a novelization of the television show, and he also authored a series of true crime articles called “Portrait of a Killer” for Manhunt. Mr. Sontup is a native of Stamford, Connecticut, attended NYU, and now lives in East Meadow, New York.

Melissa Milich, author of “Hide and Seek,” her first short story for adults, is a newspaper columnist and an intelligence specialist for the U.S. Navy Reserve. Her first children’s book, Can’t Scare Me, was published by Doubleday this past February (the review in Publisher’s Weekly speaks of “lilting prose” and “wonderful descriptions”). Ms. Milich tells us:

“I grew up and live once again in Santa Cruz County, which Alfred Hitchcock also called home. I can’t go so far as to claim we were neighbors; we lived on opposite ends of the Santa Cruz Mountains, about as far away from each other as possible and still remain in the same county. But it was close enough for his presence to be felt (I was a big fan of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour from an early age), and this colored my perception of an otherwise bucolic little town: all the dizzy rows of apple orchards, the three story Victorians with the dark dormer windows, graveyards with giant angel statues, the stagnant water next to the levee banks which made sharp little points during a sudden wind. Add to this landscape that the night comes on almost too suddenly here, like a curtain being pulled to close slowly and then dropped with a crash. Alfred and I live here.”