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Featuring History of Mystery/Detective Fiction and Other Literary Ramblings of Elizabeth Foxwell
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Happy birthday, Faye Kellerman; Steven Womack.
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Wednesday, July 30, 2008
New history of the FBI.
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Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Maine library in ashes; help rebuild it.
The Bangor Daily News reported that the Swan's Island Library, which was on the National Register of Historic Places, burned to the ground on July 24th after a lightning strike; all of its books and historical collections are gone or badly damaged. Plans are underway to rebuild; go here to learn how to support the effort.
(Hat tip to PhiloBiblos.)
(Hat tip to PhiloBiblos.)
Monday, July 28, 2008
Happy birthday, Bill Crider; Kenneth Fearing; Beatrix Potter.
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Labels:
Beatrix Potter,
Bill Crider,
Kenneth Fearing
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Happy birthday, Jack Higgins; Gillian Roberts.
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Labels:
Gillian Roberts,
Harry Patterson,
Jack Higgins,
Judith Greber
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Early Mike Wallace interviews now online.
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Friday, July 25, 2008
Where Harry Stephen Keeler got his ideas (such as they were).
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Among the contributions Keeler gave us the never-to-be forgotten "flying strangler baby," a murderous midget disguised as an infant (see X. Jones--of Scotland Yard). For more pearls(?) from the Keeler oeuvre, check out the Harry Stephen Keeler Society Web site, including the "Random Keeler Plot Generator" and the winners(?) of the "Imitate Keeler Competition."
About the photo: Keeler Society mug featuring Keeler dustjackets.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
The dinner detectives.
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See Louis Hatchett's Duncan Hines: The Man Behind the Cake Mix (2001) for further details (pp. 60-61).
About the photo: Celebrated baritone and dinner detective Lawrence Tibbett. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division reproduction number LC-DIG-ggbain-36506.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Rex Stout's picks, best detective tales.
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The Moonstone (Wilkie Collins, 1868)
The Maltese Falcon (Dashiell Hammett, 1930)
The Benson Murder Case (S. S. Van Dine [Willard Huntington Wright], 1926)
The Documents in the Case (Dorothy L. Sayers and Robert Eustace [Eustace Robert Barton], 1930)
The Innocence of Father Brown (G. K. Chesterton, 1911)
Call Mr. Fortune (H. C. Bailey, 1920)
The Bellamy Trial (Frances [Newbold] Noyes Hart, 1927)
The Cask (Freeman Wills Crofts, 1920)
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Agatha Christie, 1926)
Lament for a Maker (Michael Innes [J. I. M. Stewart], 1938)
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
A 1930s mystery from U Hawai'i Press.
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Monday, July 21, 2008
Agatha Christie, John Harvey this week on BBC Radio 7.
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Labels:
Agatha Christie,
John Harvey,
Philip Jackson
Sunday, July 20, 2008
One small step.
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There's various info about Apollo 11 here. Also check out Purdue's Alumni Astronauts collection, including coverage of its presentation of an honorary doctorate of engineering to Armstrong in 1970.
Labels:
Apollo 11,
Neil Armstrong,
Purdue University
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Podcast: A cold case in Michigan.
This month's podcast from the University of Michigan Press features Mardi Link, author of When Evil Came to Good Hart, which focuses on a 1968 unsolved murder case in a northern Michigan resort town. Go here for the podcast (MP3 file).
Labels:
Mardi Link,
University of Michigan Press
Friday, July 18, 2008
Woodrow Wilson, mystery fan.
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Authors and works mentioned by scholars as Wilson favorites include Joseph Smith Fletcher, Mary Roberts Rinehart, and E. Phillips Oppenheim's The Great Impersonation (1920). Wrote Christopher Morley in The Ironing Board (1949), “I remember Mr. Wilson, after leaving the White House, telling me he couldn’t find enough really readable detective stories. So I sent him my precious Fugitive Sleuth [by Hulbert Footner]” (168).
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.
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Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Serves God, solves crime.
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For further details on the poster and its artist, Seymour Chwast, go here.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Julie Smith on NPR's Morning Edition.
Nice piece on Julie Smith, Skip Langdon, and New Orleans on today's Morning Edition, as NPR continues its "Crime in the City" series.
Justice Holmes, mystery fan.
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– Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. to Frederick Pollock, August 16, 1931, The Essential Holmes, ed. Richard Posner (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992) 19.
“…Truth be damned—give me [E. Phillips] Oppenheim.”
– Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (commenting on Theodore Dreiser) to Felix Frankfurter, November 12, 1932, Holmes and Frankfurter: Their Correspondence, 1912–1934, ed. Robert M. Mennell and Christine L. Compson (Hanover: UP of New England, 1996) 273.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Father Brown, Sexton Blake on BBC Radio7.
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For more things Chesterton, see the blog of the American Chesterton Society.
About the photo: Kenneth More as Father Brown (DVDs available from Acorn Media)
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Whitlock Reissues Mary Elizabeth Braddon.
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The brainchild of Alfred University professor Allen Grove, Whitlock Publishing specializes in affordable editions of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature. It's hard to resist a publisher whose staff, its Web site admits, "works for pocket lint."
Braddon (1835-1915), best known for Lady Audley's Secret (1862), produced more than 80 books during her lifetime. At her death, she left an estate worth about $340,000, computed in 2007 dollars at ca. $6.4 million. Because much of her work has been difficult to obtain or has been out of print (Valancourt Books has recently reissued Braddon's Thou Art the Man [1894], and Whitlock plans an edition of Braddon's A Strange World [1875]), Grove's efforts should be applauded.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Ethel Barrymore, mystery fan.
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And from Barrymore's Memories: An Autobiography (New York: Harper, 1955):
"I read Poe, too, and I still think that 'The Gold Bug' and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" are the best of all the classic detective stories. Poe's own tragic story always fascinated me. There was no happiness for him anywhere. I have always thought that he, too, was born under a dark star" (62).
Friday, July 11, 2008
Valancourt reissues The Fate of Fenella (writ. Conan Doyle, Stoker, et al.).
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Happy birthday, Jean Kerr.
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Labels:
Jean Kerr,
Please Don't Eat the Daisies,
Walter Kerr
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Information, Please with Mystery.
Otr.net offers various episodes of Information, Please (moderated by Clifton Fadiman) with Basil Rathbone (September 27, 1938), Rex Stout (March 28, 1939), Baker Street Irregulars founder Christopher Morley (September 18, 1942; October 30, 1942; June 21, 1943), and Alfred Hitchcock (January 22, 1943). Go here to listen (need Real Player).
(Hat tip to PhiloBiblos)
(Hat tip to PhiloBiblos)
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Mysteries by the Bay.
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Monday, July 07, 2008
Ask a Historian.
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Sunday, July 06, 2008
Brilliance, Hachette end audiobook cassettes.
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According to 2007 statistics from the Audio Publishers Association, 77 percent of audiobook sales were on CD, 7 percent on cassette, 1 percent via MP3, and 14 percent via download.
Speaking as the owner of a car with a cassette player (no, not an 8-track; my car is not that old), I had thought my audiobook choices were becoming more limited.
About the photo: Fred & Friends' retro-cassette totebag
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Happy birthday, Anthony Berkeley.
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Friday, July 04, 2008
Drop That Book.
The UK's Telegraph reports that private detectives were employed by the Norfolk County Council to find people with overdue library books, DVDs, and CDs.
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Happy birthday, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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Wednesday, July 02, 2008
The Book of Accidents.
The Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities of Yale's Beinecke Library Rare Books and Manuscripts offers The Book of Accidents: Designed for Young Children (1831). Amid the somewhat macabre advisories on unfortunate occurrences to the young ("Tossed by a Bull," "Falling Out of a Coach") are the still (and sadly) relevant ("Playing with Fire-Arms," "A Boy Drowning").
You can read the entire book online here.
About the photo: Illustration from "Playing with Fire-Arms," The Book of Accidents (New Haven, 1831). Rare Books and Manuscripts, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
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You can read the entire book online here.
About the photo: Illustration from "Playing with Fire-Arms," The Book of Accidents (New Haven, 1831). Rare Books and Manuscripts, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
Labels:
Beinecke Library,
Book of Accidents,
Yale
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Happy birthday, James M. Cain.
Former New Yorker staffer and ex-newspaperman James Mallahan Cain was born today in Annapolis in 1892. Author of iconic hard-boiled works such as Mildred Pierce (1941), Love's Lovely Counterfeit (1942), and Double Indemnity (1943), Cain is an inspiration to older writers (his first novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice [1934], was not published until he was 41).
See my earlier post on Cain at Thanksgiving from James Thurber's The Years with Ross. Go here to listen to a radio production of Love's Lovely Counterfeit with Humphrey Bogart.
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See my earlier post on Cain at Thanksgiving from James Thurber's The Years with Ross. Go here to listen to a radio production of Love's Lovely Counterfeit with Humphrey Bogart.
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