Cover of the Detection Club's Ask a Policeman, featured in the Monash University exhibition |
Featuring History of Mystery/Detective Fiction and Other Literary Ramblings of Elizabeth Foxwell
Monday, April 30, 2012
Monash's "Body in the Library" exhibition.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
The empowerment of Judy Bolton.
The Trail of the Green Doll, repr. Applewood Books |
Labels:
girl sleuths,
Judy Bolton,
Margaret Sutton
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Carleton Morse's 10 favorite mysteries, 1943.
In summer 1943 writer-producer Carleton E. Morse (of I Love a Mystery and One Man's Family radio fame) listed his favorite mysteries, which he planned to send to army camps. They are the following:
• Cleve F. Adams, Sabotage (1940)
• Eric Ambler, Cause for Alarm (1938)
• Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (1939)
• Manning Coles, A Toast to Tomorrow (1941; aka Pray Silence, 1940)
• Mignon G. Eberhart, Murder by an Aristocrat (1933, film 1936)
• Dashiell Hammett, The Dain Curse (1928, mini-series 1978)
• Jonathan Latimer, Red Gardenias (1939)
• Philip MacDonald, The Rasp (1924, film 1931)
• Dorothy L. Sayers, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928)
• Rex Stout, The Red Box (1937)
Update. Photo of Carleton E. Morse.
• Cleve F. Adams, Sabotage (1940)
• Eric Ambler, Cause for Alarm (1938)
• Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (1939)
• Manning Coles, A Toast to Tomorrow (1941; aka Pray Silence, 1940)
• Mignon G. Eberhart, Murder by an Aristocrat (1933, film 1936)
• Dashiell Hammett, The Dain Curse (1928, mini-series 1978)
• Jonathan Latimer, Red Gardenias (1939)
• Philip MacDonald, The Rasp (1924, film 1931)
• Dorothy L. Sayers, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928)
• Rex Stout, The Red Box (1937)
Update. Photo of Carleton E. Morse.
Monday, April 23, 2012
A new use for the SH canon.
Christopher Morley. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Div. |
Of related interest: a TLS round-up of recent SH-related works such as Michael Dirda's On Conan Doyle and Anthony Horowitz's House of Silk.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Whistler and Collins.
Collins's Woman in White with Whistler's White Girl on cover |
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Alcott, her family, and Little Women.
Louisa May Alcott, ca. 1862 NYPL |
Monday, April 16, 2012
Boucher: Best debut mysteries of 1962.
In his NYT column of 2 Dec 1962, Anthony Boucher selected what he considered to be the best debut mysteries of the year:
• Daniel Broun, Counterweight (Edgar nominee)
• Kenneth Cook, Wake in Fright (film 1971)
• Robert L. Fish, The Fugitive (Edgar winner)
• S. B. Hough, The Bronze Perseus (aka The Tender Killer; appears on Barzun & Taylor's list of classic crime novels)
• Mark McShane, Seance (filmed as Seance on a Wet Afternoon, 1964; adapted as an opera, 2008)
• Estelle Thompson, A Twig Is Bent
Other authors mentioned, without book titles: Dick Francis (probably referring to Dead Cert, which is on the Barzun-Taylor list), Colin Watson (probably referring to Coffin, Scarcely Used), and Alan Williams (probably referring to Long Run South).
Labels:
Anthony Boucher,
Colin Watson,
Dick Francis
Saturday, April 14, 2012
The Titanic at 100.
The Titanic, NYPL. |
Others may be interested in this Boston Globe story on the Titanic in photos; today's event in DC near the location of the Titanic memorial (although it promotes the canard that the Titanic band played "Nearer, My God, to Thee"); and my short story "Unsinkable," which appears in Crime through Time II.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Bram Stoker's contract for Dracula.
Illustration of Bram Stoker from Miss Betty, 1898 |
Valancourt Books' new edition of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Parasite (1894) and Stoker's The Watter's Mou (1894) features a 1907 interview of Conan Doyle by Stoker.
Monday, April 09, 2012
Andrea Camilleri companion now available.
I'm happy to report that Andrea Camilleri: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction by Lucia Rinaldi— no. 5 in the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series that I edit—is now out, some two months earlier than anticipated. This is a comprehensive treatment of the works of the creator of Inspector Salvo Montalbano and one of the few resources in English on the author's work that is available.
Friday, April 06, 2012
Clues 30.1: Newly discovered ss by S. S. Van Dine.
Clues vol 30, no. 1 has been published and includes the following:
• Clues reveals for the first time that S. S. Van Dine (aka Willard Huntington Wright, the creator of detective Philo Vance) published several short stories featuring an intellectual criminal; these were produced under another name well before Wright adopted the Van Dine pseudonym. Using archival evidence, Brooks Hefner (James Madison University) links these stories to Van Dine and discusses them in the context of highbrow/lowbrow debates, including Wright's 1928 essay "I Used to Be a Highbrow but Look at Me Now" and his short-lived term as editor of the Smart Set.
• Matthew McGuire (University of Western Sydney) discusses Scottish writer James Hogg's contributions to crime fiction via The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824).
• Lucy Andrew (Cardiff University) analyzes the relationship between children and crime via The Boy Detective; or, The Crimes of London. A Romance of Modern Times (1865–66).
• Mark T. Decker (Bloomsburg University) looks at some intriguing connections between Allan Pinkerton's The Model Town and the Detectives (1876) and Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest (1929).
• Dawn Keetley (Lehigh University) makes the case that certain novels with sexual crimes in the Martin Beck series by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo feature political commentary, disputing the majority of critical opinion.
• Michael Given (Stephen F. Austin State University) discusses the Hap and Leonard novels of Joe R. Lansdale, dubbing them "hard-boiled Southern noir."
• Phyllis M. Betz (La Salle University) looks at the complex relationship between the female narrator and queenpin Gloria Denton in Megan Abbott's Queenpin (2007).
• Kerstin Bergman (Lund University) explores the relationship between science and truth via CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Patricia Cornwell's The Scarpetta Factor (2009).
• Reviews of a new edition of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Henry Dunbar and Christopher Pittard's Purity and Contamination in Late Victorian Detective Fiction.
• Clues reveals for the first time that S. S. Van Dine (aka Willard Huntington Wright, the creator of detective Philo Vance) published several short stories featuring an intellectual criminal; these were produced under another name well before Wright adopted the Van Dine pseudonym. Using archival evidence, Brooks Hefner (James Madison University) links these stories to Van Dine and discusses them in the context of highbrow/lowbrow debates, including Wright's 1928 essay "I Used to Be a Highbrow but Look at Me Now" and his short-lived term as editor of the Smart Set.
• Matthew McGuire (University of Western Sydney) discusses Scottish writer James Hogg's contributions to crime fiction via The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824).
• Lucy Andrew (Cardiff University) analyzes the relationship between children and crime via The Boy Detective; or, The Crimes of London. A Romance of Modern Times (1865–66).
• Mark T. Decker (Bloomsburg University) looks at some intriguing connections between Allan Pinkerton's The Model Town and the Detectives (1876) and Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest (1929).
• Dawn Keetley (Lehigh University) makes the case that certain novels with sexual crimes in the Martin Beck series by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo feature political commentary, disputing the majority of critical opinion.
• Michael Given (Stephen F. Austin State University) discusses the Hap and Leonard novels of Joe R. Lansdale, dubbing them "hard-boiled Southern noir."
• Phyllis M. Betz (La Salle University) looks at the complex relationship between the female narrator and queenpin Gloria Denton in Megan Abbott's Queenpin (2007).
• Kerstin Bergman (Lund University) explores the relationship between science and truth via CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Patricia Cornwell's The Scarpetta Factor (2009).
• Reviews of a new edition of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Henry Dunbar and Christopher Pittard's Purity and Contamination in Late Victorian Detective Fiction.
Wednesday, April 04, 2012
Quote of the day.
Anna Katharine Green, NYPL |
—from a review of Anna Katharine Green's Agatha Webb, Brooklyn Daily Eagle 21 Aug 1899: 4.
Tuesday, April 03, 2012
Happy birthday, Harriet Prescott Spofford.
Harriet Prescott Spofford, n.d. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Div. |
Monday, April 02, 2012
Not a fan of Inspector Montalbano.
Luca Zingaretti as Inspector Salvo Montalbano |
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