SMFS Spotlight: Josh Pachter

Elena Smith kicks off 2026 in style with her third interview of and SMFS member, and she's got a real all-star this time out.  Josh Pachter is a recipient of the Golden Derringer for Lifetime Achievement in Short Mystery Fiction, and has received or been nominated for more awards than can easily be listed. He's published scores of fantastic stories, and translated dozens more from a variety of languages. He's also edited a number of terrific anthologies, and anybody who's had the pleasure of meeting him knows that he's a great conversationalist with a plethora of amazing tales from the history of our genre and his own globe-trotting adventures. Take it away, Elena!

Your first story was published by EQMM when you were a teenager. Was it the first one you submitted, or had you been trying for a while?

 

“E.Q. Griffen Earns His Name” was written when I was sixteen, but I’d turned seventeen by the time EQMM published it in their December 1968 issue. As far as I can remember, it was the first time I’d ever written a piece of fiction. I’d previously contributed a poem to a fanzine published by the Soupy Sales fan club. (It was called “The Midnight Ride of Soupy Sales,” and it began, “Listen, my children, no cries, no wails, / And I’ll tell you the story of Soupy Sales.” And, yes, I still have a copy of the fanzine on my bookshelves. I was about twelve or thirteen when it came out….) 

 

Which mystery authors were your early influences? What was it that engaged you in their work?

 

Ellery Queen, of course. Rex Stout, Agatha Christie. I think what engaged me more than the crimes, more than the mysteries, were the characters, those idiosyncratic, intelligent people who were able to use their minds to make sense out of confusion. One short story that was uniquely influential was Richard Deming’s “Open File,” a police procedural in which the cops failed to solve the case they were investigating. I read it in an EQMM reprint anthology in 1967 and thought that enough clues had been presented to make the identity of the guilty party obvious. So at the age of fifteen I wrote a new ending and sent it off to the magazine. A couple of weeks later, I received a two-page handwritten response from editor Frederic Dannay, who was also half of the “Ellery Queen” writing team, suggesting that I try writing a complete story of my own. I did, and that was “E.Q. Griffen Earns His Name,” and Mr. Dannay bought it.

 

How long have you been a member of SMFS?

 

A little more than six years. 

 

How did you learn about SMFS?

 

I think it was probably either Rob Lopresti or Michael Bracken who suggested I join.

 

Are there other professional organizations you’d recommend joining?

 

SMFS is the first professional organization I recommend people interested in crime fiction join, even if they’re not themselves writers. I think it provides more day-by-day value than any of the other organizations I belong to … and unlike most of the others, which charge annual dues, SMFS is free! I’m also a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers (also free). The SMFS list serve provides market news, cautionary notes about iffy publishers, and especially camaraderie every single day, and I don’t get nearly as much of that anywhere else. And of course I like the idea of being able to participate actively in the nomination and voting and (occasionally, when my time permits) judging parts of the Derringer process. Then there’s the f2f lunch every spring at the Malice Domestic conference, which is always attended by fifteen or so members and always a good time.

 

I have read several of your short stories – “Monkey Business,” “The Great Filling Station Holdup,” and “Only the Good Die Young,” from the anthologies of the same names. I’ve noticed your skill with dialects. In “Monkey Business,” it’s intellectual; in “The Great Filling Station Holdup,” it’s southern twang, and “Only the Good Die Young” hat-tips classic detective noir. Do you write your stories then go back and apply the dialect, or do your characters speak to you as you create?

 

I’ve always been good with languages and accents. When I’m writing characters with distinctive voices, I just write their dialogue the way it seems to me it ought to sound.  Then I read my stories aloud before I submit them, and if bits of dialogue don’t sound right, I fix them.

 

How do you know so many dialects? Is it because you have lived in different places, or is it from binge-watching TV? 

 

Well, I don’t really watch a lot of television, but I lived in Europe and the Middle East for more than a decade, teaching on US military bases. All that time spent in other parts of the world has helped me develop an ear for other ways of speaking. I’m glad to know that you think I do it well. Thanks!

 

You have edited eight anthologies of crime stories inspired by songs written by well-known singer/songwriters and rock groups. Have some been more successful than others? If so, what do you attribute that to?

 

How do you define “success”? How I define it is: “Would the question ‘Have people read the book and enjoyed it?’ be answered with a ‘Yes’?” And by that definition, all eight of the books have been equally successful. I recognize, though, that other people have other definitions of success, and by those definitions, sure, some of the books have been more successful than others. The Joni Mitchell and Jimmy Buffett books have  —  so far  —  sold the most copies, but perhaps that’s not surprising, since they were the first two to be published and have therefore been out in the world the longest. 

 

The Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Beatles, and Grateful Dead volumes were all finalists for the Best Anthology Anthony Award that’s given out at Bouchercon every year, and the Dead one was a finalist for 2025’s first-ever Best Anthology Derringer. Stacy Woodson’s take on “River” from the Joni book and Michael Bracken’s on “The Downeaster ‘Alexa’” from the Billy Joel one won Derringers, and Dru Ann Love and Kristopher Zgorski’s “Ticket to Ride” from the Beatles anthology won the Anthony, Agatha, and Macavity awards. James D.F. Hannah’s “No Man’s Land” from the Billy Joel book was reprinted in The Best American Mystery and Suspense, and David Avallone’s “The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)” from the Dead one was reprinted in Best Mystery Stories of the Year. The Stephen Sondheim book had a standing-room-only launch event featuring ten of the twenty contributors at the Drama Book Shop in New York and was recently streamed as an episode of the DBS’s Drama Book Show podcast.

 

All of these are examples of measures of success. To what do I attribute the fact that certain books achieved some of them while others didn’t? I wish I knew. If I understood what comprised that secret sauce, I would apply it to all of my projects!

 

Were you the first person to do this? If so, what gave you the idea? 

 

No. To the best of my knowledge, Joe Clifford got there first, with anthologies inspired by the songs of Bruce Springsteen in 2014 and Johnny Cash in 2017. In 2019, I wrote a story inspired by Joni Mitchell’s “The Beat of Black Wings” and couldn’t find an appropriate market for it. I happened to stumble across Clifford’s books right around then and thought, I know what I’ll do! I’ll edit a book of stories inspired by Joni songs, and then I can buy my story from myself! Not only did that work out, but it turned out to be fun, so I decided to do more of them, inspired by the songs of other lyricists I admire … plus an anthology inspired by the films of the Marx Brothers. 

 

I was fortunate to find publishers who were interested in taking on the books, and the books have been fortunate to find readers who’ve been interested in reading them. Unfortunately, the publisher who released the Joni, Billy Joel, and Marx Brothers books was bought out by a company that didn’t want to support short-form fiction, and the company that did the Buffett, Simon, Beatles, and Dead books shut down with no warning two weeks before it was supposed to release a similar volume of stories inspired by Lyle Lovett songs. The good news is that Open Road Integrated Media re-released the Joni anthology in January 2025 and will be putting out the Lyle book and re-releasing the Beatles and Dead books in 2026, then in 2027 doing new editions of the Buffett and Simon books (with new stories inspired by songs from the albums Jimmy and Paul released after those books’ original publications), while Level Best will be re-releasing the Marx and Billy Joel books (each with a new story that wasn’t in the original edition).

 

When you read for pleasure, do you have a favorite mystery/ crime genre?

 

Not really. I have favorite authors, mostly people I’ve been reading for a long time (Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, John D. MacDonald), plus some who younger readers would call old-timers but who to me are “newer” writers (James Lee Burke, Michael Connelly, Lawrence Block). I will gladly read everyone who seems interesting to me — men, women, nonbinary, straight, LGBTQIA+, Caucasian, POC, American, international — but I acknowledge that, when I look at that short list of favorites, all six of them are straight white American men. I feel as if I ought to apologize for that, but I’m not sure what exactly I’d be apologizing for. For liking what I like?

 

When you write, do you have a favorite mystery/ crime genre?

 

My stuff used to be all over the map, but recently I’ve been concentrating on two series, each of them in a subgenre that’s relatively new to me. My Helmut Erhard stories are about a private eye who, despite his German name, is a Texan, born and bred, and my Dr. Guislain stories are historicals, set in Ghent (Belgium) in the mid-Nineteenth Century. There are fourteen Helmut stories so far, with more to come, but the Dr. Guislain stories are a miniseries — for a reason that is revealed in the fifth and final story.  

 

Are there any mystery/crime genres that you have not yet written in? Which ones? Do you plan to try them out some day?

 

Hmm. I’ve done a traditional whodunit novel (Dutch Threat, Genius Book Publishing), a children’s/YA mystery (First Week Free at the Roomy Toilet, Level Best Books), a mystery/horror crossover (“Pisan Zapra,” AHMM, November 2016), pastiches (my Puzzle Club miniseries), and parodies (of Ellery Queen, Ed McBain, and Edward D. Hoch). I have not done a science-fiction mystery, so perhaps I’ll give that a shot at some point.

 

Who would you recommend that I interview next? (Feel free to name more than one person)

 

Since your previous interviews were men, how about going with a woman next? I recommend Barb Goffman, who has been a finalist for major crime-fiction awards umpty-eleven times, won more of them than I can count, and received the SMFS’s Golden Derringer in 2024. 

 

Or, taking my logic two steps further, since your first three interviews were with straight white men, how about interviewing a queer Black woman next? In that case, I vote for Cheryl Head, who in addition to her many accomplishments as a writer is also co-chair of the organizing committee for the 2027 Bouchercon, which will be held in Washington, D.C.