"A Short Madness"

The first story I wrote about Dr. Joseph Guislain and Amandine Caekebeke was "A Short Madness," which I wrote while teaching at the University of Ghent in 2022, when British author Tom Mead and American author Gigi Pandian — both friends of mine — invited me to contribute to an anthology of locked-room stories they were co-editing. Tom and Gigi accepted it, but they had trouble finding a publisher for their anthology, and while they were looking I wrote a second story featuring Dr. Guislain and Amandine. I called it "The Last Dance," and it was published in the anthology Mystery Most International in April 2024.

I eventually asked Tom and Gigi if they'd be willing for me to send "A Short Madness" to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine with the understanding that -- should it be accepted -- I'd write a third Guislain/Caekebeke story for their project. They agreed, "A Short Madness" appeared in the May/June 2024 issue of EQMM, and I wrote "The Allegory of the Five Senses" for Tom and Gigi.

In this third entry in the series, Dr. Guislain and Amandine leave the Hospice Guislain to visit Ghent's Museum of Fine Arts on the occasion of Amandine's twenty-second birthday but are called back the following morning when it turns out that the painting they'd gone there to see has been stolen from the locked and guarded gallery in which it was displayed. I particularly like the fact that, at the end of the story, I turned a possible criticism into what I think is a clever Easter egg.

Tom and Gigi's anthology, All the Crime in the World, was published by Crippen and Landru in early August 2026. My fourth story in the series, "Melancholia," received Honorable Mention in the 2025 Black Orchid Novella contest co-sponsored by the Wolfe Pack and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and has been accepted for publication in EQMM, though it hasn't yet been scheduled. And the fifth one, "Post Mortem," which will also appear in EQMM, will bring the series to a close....

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