Soon after its founding in 2011, became the globally recognized home of international crime fiction. Its content is often dark, sometimes creepy, and sometimes humorous but always at the service of the literary imagination as it explores the darker regions of human experience-where the only crime is weak writing. Issue No. 5 targets the current conflict in Syria and Iraq through scopes available only to fiction. It also includes interviews with former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik and exiled Iranian novelist Naïri Nahapétian, classic desert noir from Sax Rohmer, and an early detective story from Arabian Nights. New fiction and nonfiction by George Beck, Bianca Bellová, Lauren Cahn, Doug Levy, Lindsay Moran, Andrew Scorah, Deborah Pintonelli, A.J. Sidransky, Sax Rohmer, Frank Sonderborg, Jonathan Sturak, Diane Vacca, Eddie Vega, and Barbie Wilde.