Anniversary Issue Triple Pack: Ten Year Anniversary, Twenty Year Anniversary, and Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Issue Set

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Anniversary Issue Triple Pack: Ten-, Twenty-, and Twenty-Fifth- Anniversary Issues

For a limited, we’ve brought issues from the vault to mark 25 years at The Strand, including three commemorative issues with works from authors such as Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, and Alexander McCall Smith.

Tenth-Anniversary Issue

Featuring works from Agatha Christie, R.L. Stine, and Alexander McCall Smith.

Twentieth-Anniversary Issue

Drawing on the notes left behind by the late, great Mickey Spillane, Max Allan Collins has Mike Hammer on a deeply personal case, a prequel of sorts called “Tonight, My Love.” John Floyd, in his eighteenth story for The Strand, sounds a cautionary note about snitching on a criminal in “Lucian’s Cadillac.” The multitalented writer, actor, and producer Bonnie MacBird gives Lady Hilda—from the Arthur Conan Doyle story “The Adventure of the Second Stain”—a chance to explain herself in “Lady Hilda Revealed.” In “Milquetoast,” Olaf Kroneman shows how being a jerk can prove hazardous to one’s health. And David McVey’s “MacKenzie’s Artisan Ghost Train” will have you thinking twice about spooky amusement park attractions. Also, Terry Mort gives us the scoop on the real-life events that led up to Ernest Hemingway’s World War II short story “A Room on the Garden Side,” published for the first time in the last issue of The Strand. Lastly, we have the distinct pleasure of sharing a conversation with the mother-son writing team Charles and Caroline Todd. This wonderful duo, better known as Charles Todd, has skillfully created a hugely successful sub-genre in the form of the World War I mystery.

Twenty-Fifth-Anniversary Issue

Our special holiday issue features a poem by none other than the dean of hard-boiled noir, Raymond Chandler. Written around 1955, “Requiem” shows the softer, sensitive side of the man who gave us the ever-brusque, wise-cracking PI Philip Marlowe. Fans of Chandler will enjoy Judith Freeman’s excellent biography of Chandler, The Long Embrace (2007) which also features this poem alongside wonderful insight into Chandler’s private life. Joining Chandler in this issue are a number of modern-day writers who need no introduction. In “Mr. Slope, He Falls,” Alexander McCall Smith turns the English country-house mystery on its head when a party of backstabbing academics gathers for a weekend in the Scottish Highlands. In “The Usual Suspect,” Jeffery Deaver blends existential dread with humor as he plays on the latest paranoia concerning the power of artificial intelligence. Turning to pastiche, Mike Adamson sends Holmes and Watson on foot into the mean streets of East London in “King of the Rats.” And bringing it home, John Floyd, a Strand stalwart since Issue 2, strikes a karmic chord in his perfect getaway tale “The Florida Blues.”

This issue will be a tough act to follow when it comes to interviews. Here, we are lucky to feature conversations with three great talents. Bob Odenkirk has mastered all kinds of mediums, from sketch-comedy (think cult-classic Mr. Show) to dramatic acting (Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad) to memoir (Comedy, Comedy, Comedy, Drama). Last month, he and his daughter Erin—a painter and illustrator—joined me for a thoughtful, wide-ranging discussion about the importance of the written word, art, and what it was like to collaborate on Zilot and Other Important Rhymes, recently released by Little, Brown and Company. Also, on the heels of a new book—Not Forever, But For Now, published by Simon and Schuster—Chuck Palahniuk of Fight Club fame dropped in for a chat, offering some of the real-life inspirations for his debut novel and other minimalist postmodern masterpieces.