ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, December 1966. Overall rating: 3 stars.

JACOB HAY “The Opposite Number.” The “inside” story of the spy business. (3)

AGATHA CHRISTIE “Hercule Poirot and the Sixth Chair.” Original title: “Yellow Iris.” Poirot stops a murder from occurring at a dinner party. (3)

WILLIAM BRITTAIN “The Boy Who Read Agatha Christie.” Schoolboy foils plan of college students. Enjoyable but trivial. (3)

ARTHUR PORGES “Private Beachhead.” Gimmick with radios too uncertain for story basis. (2)

YOUNGMAN CARTER “Seeds of Time.” SF story about visitor through time. Nothing unusual. (3)

CORNELL WOOLRICH “All It Takes Is Brains.” Novelette. Original title “Crime of St. Catherine Street.” Man on a bet enters Montreal with 75¢ and leaves with $1500, being wanted for murder in the meantime. Exciting in pulp style. (4)

CHRISTOPHER ANVIL “The Problem Solver and the Defector.” Verner finds secret plans. (3)

GEORGE EMMETT “Pushkin Pays.” Attempt to dispose of body in ocean fails, thanks to appearance of Russian submarine. (1)

HELEN NIELSEN “The Chicken Feed Mine.” Three ex-servicemen kill a desert rat for his “savings.” (3)

JOHN T. SLADEK “Capital C on Planet Amp.” SF, but in far-out camp style. Garbage. (0)

L. E. BEHNEY “The Long Hot Day.” Tale from home. Husband kills stranger his wife falsely accuses. (3)

JOHN DICKSON CARR “To Wake the Dead.” Original title “Blind Man’s Hood.” An adequate locked room mystery, but supernatural tone of story is forced. (2)

RUFUS KING “Anatomy of a Crime.” hort novel. Stuff Drscoll solves a murder made to appear a textbook suicide. Actually an inverted detective story as the reader follows the battle of wits between murderer and investigator with fascination. (4)

– August 1967