I am not sure if this magazine had decided yet if it will be called Mystery Weekly Magazine (although it was always a monthly magazine) or just Mystery Magazine - the last few issues had dropped Weekly from the cover but the Kindle file still has "Mystery Weekly Magazine" in its first positions.

The first issue for 2022 has 10 stories - 9 regular ones, 1 "Solve-it-Yourself" (with a solution in the next issue). None of them really sparkled but none of them was really bad either so a good enough issue.

"Nothing Nefarious, Just General Badassery" by Daniel C. Bartlett's narrator used to be an artist. These days he is married, has a kid and teaches art - one needs to eat and take care of their family after all. But when a friend calls with a tale of a buried treasure while the wife is out of town, he cannot resist and decides to help. Things get a bit more heated than expected (there is a treasure but it is also the 21st century and you cannot just find coins and sell them) and the day of innocent looking for treasure (for some value of innocent) turns into something completely different. And there is a fedora. The story works but it also felt overwritten.

"Noble Vista Blues" by Joseph S. Walker's protagonist on the other hand never had much chance - he took money from a criminal and then proceeded to steal from him. The story is mostly the backstory of how he got to this point and how he tried to make things better and it had a few twists and turns that were almost unexpected but the basic premise made it clear where the story is going.

"In the Beginning, the End" by Stephen D. Rogers is a clever little story which shows us two separate timelines - in one a man and a woman talk in bed, in the other a woman is trying to dig a hole. You think you know how these connect - until the very last paragraph when the story gets turned on its head.

"Bad Times at Big Rock" by John M. Floyd takes is to the Wild West and the frontier towns and shanties of the days long gone. A pair of outlaws terrorize one of those small towns until an unexpected hero stands up to them. Add a witch/seer/wise woman of a type which steers the action a little bit and it was an enjoyable story.

"All the Love You Can Handle for a Dollar" by Lamont A. Turner starts with a dead girl and a man accused of her murder. Except that nothing is as easy as it seems and the only person who does not appear to be who he claims to be is the man accused of murder. So it is down to a detective, Doverman, to find out the truth. This story reads like a pulp one - with Doverman being a bad-ass and trying to emulate some of the big pulp detectives. It did not quite work but it could have been worse.

"Superficial Appraisals" by K. R. Segriff is set in 1953, in a spooky hotel with real ghosts and an owner who is about to get the surprise of his life. He does - but then the ghosts get the surprise of their (un)life as well.

"A Perfect Spiral" by David Bart introduces us to a man who seems to always loose - a crash kicked him out from football (but he kept the girl), his small hotel which started great got overshadowed by a big one nearby and these days the town has a bet going on on when he will get even a single customer. And then the one he gets dies on them. Which turns out to be a bit of a good luck for the owners of the hotel because it allows them to start a new career - until things go horribly wrong there of course. The story actually start with the end - we see the final result at the very end but the moments before that are the story-opener.

"Out for Delivery" by Gregory L. Norris's main character Keith is a letter carrier who gets enamored by a woman on his route. When she appears to be in danger, he decides to do something about it - except that seeing a situation from the outside, even if you believe to know everyone because you see the mail they get, does not mean that you really know what is going on. That's the kind of story that cannot happen anymore (with most bills coming online only) and it feels more 1930s than 1980s based on some parts of it but something does not sound right. It is a nice story but that inability to place it in time seems almost planned - it just does not belong anywhere.

"Drive Through" by Keith Brooke is probably one of the strongest stories in this issue. What do you think if you see someone you know killing a man with their car? Carrie decides to protect Lucy - and that ends up being a really bad idea because as it turns out, Carrie never really understood what her place in Lucy's life was. A quiet semi-psychological story which makes you wonder if you really know what people think about you.

John H. Dromey's You-Solve-It story "Man Overboard" has an insurance detective looking after what appears to be a reckless action by a young man (who is now dead). But the more he looks into it, the less it looks like being either reckless or an incident. We shall see next month if I figured out what he did see and did not spell out. ( )