Лиза Марклунд: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 137, No. 1. Whole No. 833, January 2011

The ringing in of a new year always seems to bring a mix of reflections on what’s gone before and plans, hopes, and expectations for the future. This year that’s especially true for EQMM, because we’ve come to an important milestone: the start of our 70th year of publication.

More than a dozen American magazines exceed EQMM ’s longevity — Scientific American, Harper’s, The New Yorker, and literary magazines such as The Virginia Quarterly and The Yale Review, to name a few. But if we consider only magazines that publish popular fiction, there is, I believe, just one that can claim continuous publication for longer than EQMM and that’s one of our sister magazines, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, which began life under the title Astounding in 1930.

We’ve reached this near-record run thanks to continued contributions to our pages from top writers in the field and because we have the good fortune to have a discriminating and loyal readership. Another factor in our success, I think, has been staying true to our original purpose, which Ellery Queen stated in the very first issue as being to provide “all types of detective and crime short stories” and for “consistently good writing” to be as important a requirement for inclusion as “original ideas, excitement, and craftsmanship.”

Despite shifts in fashion, EQMM covers as much of the genre as possible in each issue. Hardboiled private-eye stories are found shoulder to shoulder with “cozies,” “impossible crime” tales, psychological suspense, noir pieces, and police procedurals. Over the years, as the fortunes of the various sub-genres have waxed and waned, EQMM has provided the same steady home for them, sometimes sustaining writers whose novels have been temporarily cut from book publishers’ lists due to changes in the prevailing winds, only to see them come back into novelistic favor again a few years later.

Serving the community of writers was, for Ellery Queen, the other side of the coin to providing readers with a rich reading experience. In that first issue he said: “We propose to give you stories by the big-name writers, by lesser-known writers, and by unknown writers.” To that end, in the late 1940s he instituted one of EQMM ’s most famous features, the Department of First Stories, and in its pages brought into print for the first time many writers who came to be among mystery’s leading lights.

Over the course of this anniversary year we’ll be highlighting aspects of EQMM ’s history and current attractions and also making some projections for the future. We start, as seems appropriate with the new year about to arrive and Baby New Year running across our cover, with a salute to EQMM ’s first-time writers. In The Jury Box, Jon L. Breen reviews the novels of several authors who got their start in EQMM, and we’re presenting the short-story debuts of two new writers in this issue. One appears, as is traditional, in the Department of First Stories, the other, because the style of his story is so fitting for Black Mask, under that department’s aegis.

Since 1941, when EQMM ’s first issue — described by Ellery Queen as “experimental” — found its way into readers’ hands, many other mystery and crime short-story publications have come and (mostly) gone. EQMM remains because of your enthusiastic support. As we celebrate our milestone, it’s with special appreciation for all of you.

Janet Hutchings, Editor

This story’s protagonist, Diego, a young Marrano sailor on Columbus’s first voyage, first appeared in “The Green Cross” ( EQMM August 2010). Elizabeth Zelvin is currently at work on a historical novel of suspense entitled Voyage of Strangers, in which Diego joins Columbus on his second voyage. In it, Diego has to save his sister Rachel from the Inquisition, in an adventure the author says will “blow the lid off the ‘discovery’ of America.” Meanwhile, here’s Diego experiencing Christmas (and a secret Chanukah) in the New World.

I crouched in the crow’s nest of the Santa Maria, praying to Ha’shem that I would succeed in coaxing my tinderbox to strike a spark. That spark must then ignite two short lengths of cable, dipped in lamp oil and wedged upright in an open leather pouch filled with sand, before anybody on deck noticed that I was not among them. It was the 25th day of Kislev in the year 5253 according to the Hebrew calendar, the second night of the Festival of Lights. It was also December 24th in what the others, including the Admiral, called the Year of Our Lord 1492: Christmas Eve.

My breath caught as the candles in my improvised menorah flared up, then settled down to glow with a steady flame. To my relief, they did not smoke or flicker. Getting caught would be a disaster too dreadful to contemplate: hanging, here or back in Spain, for practicing my forbidden Jewish faith, and a flogging I might not survive for that heaviest of transgressions at sea, kindling unauthorized fire on a wooden ship.

I muttered the b’rucha rather than chanting it aloud, as I sometimes did when the ship was scudding along under full sail and the wind’s howl drowned out my song of praise to Adonai. I would not have risked even that, but the watch had just changed, and all who could do so had dropped where they stood onto the deck and fallen at once into a heavy slumber.

They had good reason. For the past two days, we had been besieged by visitors from the villages beyond the shore of the beautiful bay the Admiral had named Santo Tomás. More than a thousand of the folk we call Indians, for want of a better term, had swarmed onto the Santa Maria from canoes, along with half as many more who came swimming out to us, although we had anchored a full league offshore. All were unclothed, even the women, and all bore gifts, evidently valuing a calabash of water or a strange, sweet fruit as highly as a nugget or ornament of gold. Though I would not confess it even to Fernando, my only friend on board, I had never seen a naked woman before. I accepted the fruit and water with thanks — none offered me gold — and shied away from their questing hands, which made them laugh. The older seamen had no such inhibitions. I kept my eyes on Admiral Columbus, who was dignified and gracious as always.

“Mark how freely they give, Diego,” he said softly at a moment when only I stood near him. “It is easy to recognize when something is given from the heart.”

My heart swelled with pride, as always on the rare occasions when he spoke my name, tacitly acknowledging his old bond with my father, which must never be mentioned. Yet it also felt ready to burst with grief, in spite of the Admiral’s kindness. These naked and untutored folk welcomed strangers to their table, just as we had at Passover back in Seville, before we were driven out. Now we were all strangers in a strange land ourselves, my parents and my sisters no less than I and my comrades on this unpredictable voyage.

My lip curled when it occurred to me that the villagers’ offerings of gold resembled the coin we gave to children at the Festival of Lights. It was at that moment that I conceived the plan of lighting my own menorah. I could not try it on the first night, when the decks were still crowded with visitors and not a man aboard had gotten a night’s sleep since we first greeted our Indian guests. When the excitement had seemed to be dying down, it was roused again by the arrival of gifts for the Admiral from a cacique named Guancanagarí, who seemed to be the king or prince of this region. Chief among the gifts was a magnificent mask with nose, tongue, and ears of hammered gold, along with baskets heaped with food, skeins of spun cotton, gold, and parrots that screeched, flashed brightly colored feathers, and dropped dung all over the vessel. Guancanagarí also invited the whole ship’s company, and the Niña’s as well — for the Pinta had gone off on her own some time before, and we were fearful of her fate — to come ashore and feast with him.