Dashiell Hammett and copyright.

Dashiell Hammett
Yank 30 Nov 1945

Gregory Steirer discusses in Humanities Magazine (published by the National Endowment for the Humanities) how a copyright tussle between author Dashiell Hammett and Warner Bros. over his detective Sam Spade changed copyright law.

Collected Letters of Wilkie Collins now available online.

Wilkie Collins

The Wilkie Collins Society has made available online The Collected Letters of Wilkie Collins, complete with annotations. Among the fascinating content:

• Prosecutor Nathaniel C. Moak used plot points from Collins' The Moonstone as part of his argument in court (he was unsuccessful; letter of 21 Aug 1883, ref. no. 3110).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anna Katharine Green

• Collins' praise of Anna Katharine Green to publisher George Haven Putnam (1883, ref. no. 2245): "Have I read 'The Leavenworth Case'? I have read it through at one sitting. Need I say after that what I think of it? Yes—because I have a word to add about Miss Green's future work. Her powers of invention are so remarkable—she has so much imagination and so much belief (a most important qualification for our art) in what she writes, that I have nothing to report of myself, so far, of most sincere admiration. ...."

The return of Rinehart's The Bat.

On October 27, the Somerville Theatre (MA) will show the silent film The Bat (1926), directed by Roland West; it is based on the play by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood, which adapted Rinehart's The Circular Staircase (1908). A live score by Jeff Rapsis will accompany the film. 

On November 1, AFI Silver Theatre (MD) will show the film with live musical accompaniment by Ben Model. Undercrank Productions has released a digital restoration of the film on DVD with a score by Model.

Rinehart made millions from The Bat. Review of the film from the 19 Jun 1926 Edmonton [Canada] Journal: "persistently challenging audiences to identify the arch criminal behind the stirring trail of mystery" ... a "peppery melodrama." The 16 Aug 1908 Baltimore Sun wrote regarding The Circular Staircase, "The story is well and vigorously written, the plot, barring a few inconsistencies, first-class, the dénouement unforeseen and the characters vivid and interesting."

Q. Patrick and radio station WNYC.

Andy Lanset, director of archives at New York Public Radio, discusses how radio station WNYC's signoff played a role in "Death and Canasta" (1950) by mystery author Q. Patrick (aka Hugh Callingham Wheeler).

New film music releases: Goldfinger, The Talented Mr. Ripley

As Scott Bettencourt reports in Film Score Friday, there are two releases of potential interest:

• 60th anniversary edition of the score to the James Bond film Goldfinger (1964, composed by John Barry, La-La Land) 

• Score to The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999, composed by Gabriel Yared, Music Box)

New statue of Rod Serling.

A new statue of writer and Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling was unveiled in Recreation Park, in his hometown of Binghamton, NY, on September 15. 

A blue plaque for E. C. R. Lorac.

On August 19, a new blue plaque was unveiled at Newbanks Cottage, the former residence of British mystery writer E. C. R. Lorac (aka Edith Caroline Rivett, 1894–1958), in Aughton, UK (about 10 miles north of Liverpool). Mystery author Martin Edwards provides some details on the event on his blog; see also his blog post on an earlier exhibition about Lorac's work. 

Illustration from E. C. R. Lorac, "Remember to
Ring Twice," MacKill's Mystery Magazine,
Sept. 1952

Clues 42.2: BIPOC Female Detectives in a Global Context.

Clues, vol. 42, no. 2 (2024)—a theme issue on BIPOC female detectives in a global context guest edited by Sam Naidu (Rhodes University, South Africa)—has been published. Contact McFarland to order the issue or a subscription. Abstracts follow below; I will update this post once the ebook versions are available.

Introduction: BIPOC Female Detectives in a Global Context / Sam Naidu

The guest editor discusses the rationale for and content of this Clues theme issue, including articles on the TV series Brooklyn Nine-Nine and the work of Eleanor Taylor Bland, Oyinkan Braithwaite, K’im Ch’aehŭi, Maria L. M. Fres-Felix, Pauline Hopkins, Tiffany D. Jackson, Vaseem Khan, Angela Makholwa, Marcia Muller, BarbaraNeely, Nnedi Okorafor, and Kwei Quartey.

“Or my name ain’t Venus Johnson”:
The Birth of Pauline Hopkins’ Black Female Detective in Hagar’s Daughter
Andrea Tinnemeyer

Pauline Hopkins’ Hagar’s Daughter (serialized 1901–03) meditates on detective fiction’s potential to offer agency and self-created potential for a Black woman in Jim Crow times. The result is a liberating use of genre that not only celebrates the prowess of its detective, Venus Johnson, but also affirms the knowledge that flows from Black women and their communities.

Night Girl and the Nate-Rock:
Material Feminisms and Double Consciousness in BarbaraNeely’s Blanche on the Lam
Lisa Koyuki Smith (CUNY Graduate Center)

This study focuses on BarbaraNeely’s Blanche on the Lam (1992), exploring Neely’s material feminisms avant la lettre, their connection to W.E.B. Du Bois’s articulation of double consciousness, narratological understandings of the detective genre, and narratives of racial passing that express the discursive and material complexity of race relations in the United States. 

Listen to the Silence:
Reconsidering Race in Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone Hard-boiled Detective Novels
Alexander N. Howe (University of the District of Columbia)
This article examines the development of the Native identity of Marcia Muller’s female private eye, Sharon McCone. McCone initially is identified with one-eighth Shoshone heritage. In Listen to the Silence (2000), McCone learns of her adoption and the membership of her birth parents in the Shoshone Nation. The series’ second half explores McCone’s Native identity, and contemporary Native experience, with increasing nuance and detail. 

“You are a Symbol, Persis”: The Complexity of Postcolonial and Feminist Progress in Vaseem Khan’s Malabar House Series
Sophie-Constanze Bantle (University of Freiburg, Germany)
Vaseem Khan’s Malabar House series presents 1950s India as rife with opportunity and difficulty. Post-independence feminist and postcolonial emancipation is portrayed as a complicated and ongoing process, mirrored in discussions around Persis’ status as a symbol. Persis combats her society’s social problems, providing an example of agency in the face of oppression.

Poison and espionage.

On the Spy Museum's SpyCast, host Andrew Hammond discusses the role of poison in espionage (such as with Alexander Litvinenko) with Neil Bradbury, professor of physiology and biophysics at the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, and author of A Taste for Poison: Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers Who Used Them.

The avian Nick and Nora.

Austin Wood in The Advocate discusses a pair of bald eagles—dubbed Nick and Nora after Dashiell Hammett's Nick and Nora Charles—at White Rock Lake in Texas. 

Victorian gaslighting roundtable, Sept. 5.

The Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States will hold a Victorian gaslighting roundtable on Zoom on Thursday, September 5, at 11 a.m. Pacific time (2 p.m. Eastern time). Presenters will discuss various examples of gaslighting in Victorian literature and culture (many probably know the term for this form of psychological manipulation stems from Patrick Hamilton's play Angel Street, aka Gaslight, adapted as a 1944 film). Advance registration is required.

 

Map of Maigret's Paris.

Georges Simenon.

Coming up for release in September from Herb Lester Associates is Maigret's Paris, a map of locations from the Chief Inspector Maigret oeuvre of Georges Simenon. 

Other maps of potential interest: 

• The Raymond Chandler Map of Los Angeles
• Agatha Christie's England
• John le Carré's London
• The World of Patricia Highsmith

New audiobk of Elizabeth Linington's first Mendoza novel.

LibriVox has released a new free audiobook of Dell Shannon's Edgar-nominated Case Pending (1960), the first in her Lt. Mendoza series. Shannon was one pseudonym of Elizabeth Linington (1921–88), who was an early female writer of police procedurals; her other pseudonyms included Anne Blaisdell and Lesley Egan. Anthony Boucher wrote in the 24 Jan 1960 New York Times that in Case Pending, "Miss Shannon tells of murder gone mad in the near-slums of Los Angeles, deftly (if almost over-precisely) tying a number of other plots in with her murders" (BR43).

Film Music Friday: Chase films, Jerry Goldsmith.

"Top o' the world":
James Cagney in
White Heat (1949)

The latest episodes of Kansas Public Radio's Film Music Friday feature music from chase films (e.g., The Bourne Identity, The Fugitive, North by Northwest, The 39 Steps, White Heat) and that by famed composer Jerry Goldsmith (e.g., Chinatown).

Preserving the home of Anna Katharine Green.

Anna Katharine Green. NYPL.

The Friends of the Rohlfs' House (affiliated with the 501-c-3 Allentown Association) is working to acquire the Buffalo, NY, Craftsman home of pioneering mystery author Anna Katharine Green (1846–1935) and her husband, famed furniture designer Charles Rohlfs (1853–1936), and turn it into a house museum. The group has been purchasing pieces that were originally in the house. This post about the group's latest acquisition (a rocking chair) lists contact details for contributions.

Charles Rohlfs.

Film Music Friday: Bernard Herrmann.

Catching up on Film Music Friday episodes from Kansas Public Radio, there's an episode on composer Bernard Herrmann, including excerpts from his scores for Psycho and North by Northwest.

Fan of the theremin? There's an episode on it, including an excerpt from Spellbound.

Prof. Leon Theremin with his eponymous
device, 1928. NYPL

More Albert Glasser scores (film noir).

Following the release of Albert Glasser's score for Ed McBain's Cop Hater are Glasser's scores for the films Please Murder Me (with Raymond Burr and Angela Lansbury, 1956) and Treasure of Monte Cristo (with Glenn Langan, Adele Jergens, and Steve Brodie, 1949).

Also of interest: Glasser's score for The Big Caper (with Rory Calhoun and James Gregory, 1957)

 

John Buchan on the History of Literature podcast.

The History of Literature podcast sits down with Ursula Buchan to discuss the multifaceted life and work of her grandfather, John Buchan (The Thirty-Nine Steps, etc.).

The Hardy Boys return.

Just out from Dover Publications: books 4 and 5 in the Hardy Boys series—The Missing Chums (orig publ 1928; Frank and Joe pursue  robbers and kidnappers) and Hunting for Hidden Gold (orig publ. 1928; Frank and Joe go in aid of their injured father and locate an abandoned mine). They join The Tower Treasure (book 1, 1927), The House on the Cliff (book 2, 1927), and The Secret of the Old Mill (book 3, 1927). Canadian journalist Leslie McFarlane wrote these books as well as a memoir, Ghost of the Hardy Boys.

Film score to Ed McBain's Cop Hater.

As Scott Bettencourt notes in Film Score Friday, Kronos Records has scheduled for release in July the soundtrack to Cop Hater (1958), the film based on the first 87th Precinct novel by Ed McBain (1956) featuring Robert Loggia, Gerald S. O'Loughlin, and Vincent Gardenia. The composer is Albert Glasser. Order the CD or listen to a few samples here.

My latest EQMM column.

My latest column, The Jury Box, appears in the July/Aug 2024 Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. In it, I review recent classic reprints and short story collections that offer elements atypical in mystery fiction (like the unreliable narrator). Authors covered are Joan Cockin (aka Edith Joan Burbidge Macintosh), Sebastian Farr (aka Eric Walter Blom), Lorenz Heller, Edward D. Hoch, R. M. Laurenson, Helen Nielsen, Isabel Ostrander, and Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements.

Film score to Murder by Decree (1979).

As Scott Bettencourt notes in Film Score Friday, the score for the Sherlock Holmes film Murder by Decree (dir. Bob Clark, 1979) has been released by Howling Wolf Records. Holmes, played by Christopher Plummer, and Dr. Watson, played by James Mason, go on the trail of Jack the Ripper. The composers are Carl Zittrer and Paul Zaza.

The neglected Carolyn Wells.

If you missed the OSU Libraries-sponsored presentation by Rebecca Rego Barry on poet, humorist, children's writer, and mystery author Carolyn Wells (1862–1942), the subject of her new book The Vanishing of Carolyn Wells, you now can see the video of the presentation. Wells was the creator of detective Fleming Stone, her mystery The Clue (1909) is on the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone list of essential mysteries, and her Sherlock Holmes pastiche "The Adventure of the Clothes-line" (1915) is well known in Sherlockian circles. 

Hammett's "Suggestions to Detective Story Writers."

Dashiell Hammett,
Yank, 30 Nov. 1945

The Library of America has posted Dashiell Hammett's "Suggestions to Detective Story Writers," which were part of his Crime Wave columns of 7 June and 5 July 1930 in the New York Evening Post. Irritated by mystery writers' mistakes that he'd seen in their works, Hammett offered correctives of these, including items such as "When you are knocked unconscious you do not feel the blow that does it" and "'Youse' is the plural of 'you.'"

Clues 42.1: Carr, Christie, Conan Doyle, Eco, Faulkner, island mysteries, Korean crime fiction, etc.

Vol 42, no. 1 (2024) of Clues: A Journal of Detection has been published; see below for abstracts. For print issues or subscriptions, contact McFarland. Ebook versions are available via Kindle and Nook.

Update, 25 May 2024: Google Play ebook of the issue is now available.

Introduction: A Kaleidoscope of Cultures and Works
Caroline Reitz (John Jay College of Criminal Justice–CUNY / CUNY Graduate Center)

The executive editor of Clues provides an overview of the issue, including articles on John Dickson Carr; Agatha Christie; Arthur Conan Doyle in Dutch translation; Umberto Eco; a YA mystery series featuring Indigenous issues; island mysteries; Korean crime fiction; and noir’s relationship with works by William Faulkner, David Goodis, and John D. MacDonald.

Spotlight on... Crime Fiction in Korea: Transformation and Transnationality of the Genre
Jooyeon Rhee (Penn State University)

This essay traces the transnational literary flow and popular imaginations of modernity in colonial Korea (1910–45), the effect of the Korean War and the Cold War, and diverse responses to global neoliberalism in contemporary Korea. It highlights representative themes in each period and notable writers in modern crime fiction.

“A Modernist Lampstand”: Noir and the Avant-garde in William Faulkner’s Sanctuary
Alex Davis (University College Cork, Ireland) 

This essay considers Sanctuary in the context of William Faulkner’s career-long predilection for crime fiction, interpreting his avant-garde appropriation and manipulation of genre writing in the novel against the background of its relationship to American naturalism (including the noir novel) and nineteenth-century European realism.

Despair and the Noir Character
Michael Caleb Tasker 

Noir’s atmosphere of anxiety and/or despair stems not from environment and setting but rather from character and from an outsider defined by and riddled with a very Kierkegaardian sense of existentialist despair. As works by John D. MacDonald and David Goodis demonstrate, the despairing protagonist is the foremost defining characteristic of noir fiction.

“Nobody in the Renaissance conceived of a revenge quite so delicious”:
John Dickson Carr’s Bencolin Stories and Jacobean Revenge Plays
Lisa Hopkins (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)

This article argues that John Dickson Carr’s first four novels about Inspector Henri Bencolin each draw from a different early modern revenge tragedy: It Walks by Night alludes to John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi; Castle Skull borrows names and atmosphere from Henry Chettle’s Hoffman; The Lost Gallows nods to Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy; and The Corpse in the Waxworks evokes Thomas Middleton’s and William Rowley’s The Changeling. 

Ian Rankin on stage.

Scheduled for the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham (UK) in November 2024 is Rebus: A Game Called Malice, a play cowritten by Ian Rankin and Simon Reade, in which investigator John Rebus must suss out secrets of guests during a post-dinner mystery game. Reade may be best known as the producer-screenwriter for the 2017 film of R.C. Sherriff's Journey's End.

Update, May 25, 2024: The play will run at the Pavilion Theatre Glasgow from Sept 23–27.

Arsène Lupin: Music and text.

Music Box Records has issued a 20th anniversary edition of the soundtrack to Arsène Lupin (2004) composed by Debbie Wiseman. The film features adventures of the gentleman thief who was created by Maurice Leblanc (1864–1941) and debuted in 1905. Penguin has issued various Arsène Lupin collections in English and Spanish, Gallimard has versions in French for young readers, and Coup d'Oeil in Québec has a French edition for older readers.

• Listen to some samples from the soundtrack.

 

 

Rumpole and client self-determination.

Leo McKern as the titular character in
the TV series Rumpole of the Bailey

In St. Mary's Journal on Legal Practice & Ethics, Thomas Bulleit—a former partner in the law firm Ropes & Gray—looks at the role of client self-determination and the ways that this may conflict with the barrister's aims in John Mortimer's Rumpole of the Bailey short stories. (hat tip to Law & Humanities blog)

An appreciation of Henry Mancini's "Peter Gunn Theme."

From left: composer Henry Mancini, Peter Gunn star
Craig Stevens, and writer-director Blake Edwards

On Philadelphia's WRTI, journalist Shaun Brady writes an appreciation of Henry Mancini's theme for the 1958–61 TV detective show Peter Gunn—"its propulsive rhythm suggesting the steady thrum of tires on pavement, its skulking piano-guitar ostinato, and its Doppler-effect brass fanfares."

Some "Peter Gunn Theme" versions:

• Henry Mancini and His Orchestra, Ed Sullivan Show, 1969

• Emerson, Lake and Palmer, 1978

• Lahti Symphony Orchestra (conductor: Nick Davies), 2011

• Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra, 2016

Lou and Herbert Hoover, mystery fans.

On "Hoover Heads," the blog of the Herbert Hoover Library and Museum, Thomas F. Schwartz has written a series of posts on First Lady Lou Henry Hoover and President Herbert Hoover as mystery fans. 

• The friendship of the Hoovers with author Mary Roberts Rinehart.
  
  
• Mystery writers read by the Hoovers, pt 1. (Margery Allingham, Dashiell Hammett, Ellery Queen, Dorothy L. Sayers, S. S. Van Dine)
  
  
• Mystery writers read by the Hoovers, pt 2. (The Detection Club)
  
  
• Mystery writers read by the Hoovers, pt 3. (Margery Allingham, Dashiell Hammett)
  
  
• Mystery writers read by the Hoovers, pt. 4. (Lawrence Saunders, aka John Burton Davis and Clare Ogden Davis; Harry Stephen Keeler)
  
  
  
• Mystery writers read by the Hoovers, pt. 5. (Carolyn Wells)
  
  
• Mystery writers read by the Hoovers, pt. 6. (Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers)
  
  
• Mystery writers read by the Hoovers, pt. 7. (Freeman Wills Crofts, Robin Forsythe)
  
  
• Mystery writers read by the Hoovers, p. 8. (Harry Ashton-Wolfe)

(Photos: Herbert Hoover, Lou Henry Hoover: NYPL)