Clues 27.2 published: Lesbian crime fiction.

Clues 27.2 has been published, which is a theme issue on lesbian crime fiction guest edited by Jacky Collins (Northumbria University, UK). The contributors look at works by—among others—American author Katherine V. Forrest, British author Stella Duffy, French author Maud Tabachnik, German author Thea Dorn (pictured on the Clues cover at left and scheduled to be a visiting professor at Dartmouth in spring 2010), and Spanish author Isabel Franc. Go here for the table of contents; here for more information on the journal.

The issue also includes some intriguing articles on class and conscience in Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male (1939) by Robert Lance Snyder; spiritualism in the work of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Josephine Bell by Victoria Stewart; and the importance of setting in Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind (2004) and Dulce Chacón’s Cielos de Barro (2000) by Lorraine Ryan. Also featured are reviews of Leonard Cassuto's Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories, Julia Jones's The Adventures of Margery Allingham, Sari Kawana's Murder Most Modern: Detective Fiction and Japanese Culture, and editor Edward J. Rielly's Murder 101: Essays on the Teaching of Detective Fiction.