5/29/1937 Flash!

May 29, 1937.  The issue of Detective Fiction Weekly with this cover date featured a new story by Richard Sale.  It was the first that included both of his most popular characters.  Daffy Dill was a reporter and Candid Jones was a photographer and insurance investigator.

Award-winning mystery writer Evan Lewis selected this story for the Mystery Classics section of the May 2015 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.  He said that "'Flash!', told entirely through letters, telegrams,news reports, radio bulletins and one-sided phone calls, was one of the most unusual stories in the magazine's long history.  And it's a great introduction to the wild world of Richard Sale."

If you want to read it you had better get your hands on the May 2015 issue of AHMM.  Easier to find than a 1937 DFW.

5/20/1939 And Then There Were None...

May 20, 1939.  Agatha Christie seemed determined to try every possible variation of the murderer-suspects-victim-detective combination.  This date saw the publication in the Saturday Evening Post of the first episode of the American edition of And Then There Were None, one of her most audacious explorations of her chosen field.

Ten people, all with shady pasts, are guests on an island.  There is no way off.  And somebody is killing them all, one by one...  The climax is breathtaking.

The New York Times Book Review: "The whole thing is utterly impossible and utterly fascinating. It is the most baffling mystery that Agatha Christie has ever written, and if any other writer has ever surpassed it for sheer puzzlement the name escapes our memory. We are referring, of course, to mysteries that have logical explanations, as this one has. It is a tall story, to be sure, but it could have happened."

5/5/2014 Shanks Holds The Line.

May 5. 2014.  Trace Evidence, the Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine blog, puts up a free short story.  Robert Lopresti offered "Shanks Holds The Line" as a public service, to warn people about a certain scam.