Woman on the Run (1950).

A man witnesses a murder and goes on the run, pursued by his wife (Ann Sheridan), the police (Robert Keith), the media (Dennis O'Keefe), and the murderer. The film is based on the short story "Man on the Run" (1948) by Sylvia Tate. One of the screenwriters is Alan Campbell, husband of Dorothy Parker; the other is Norman Foster, who also directed the film.

Murder with Pictures (1936).

Lew Ayres and Gail Patrick
in Murder with Pictures

In Murder with Pictures, newspaper photographer Lew Ayres looks into the murder of a lawyer and encounters complications when he falls for the suspected perpetrator (Gail Patrick). The film is based on the book of the same name (1935) by MWA Grand Master George Harmon Coxe.

In praise of Oppenheim.

E. Phillips Oppenheim

Melody of the Redeeming Qualities blog pens an appreciation of the E. Phillips Oppenheim works The Long Arm of Mannister (1909; "he likes to take his victims to dinner and toy with them") as well as Mr. Billingham, the Marquis and Madelon (1927; "[e]veryone drinks lots of champagne cocktails"). She especially likes private inquiry agent and baroness Clara Linz of Advice Limited (1936; "most of her work has the potential to cause scandals and international financial crises"). Although she is no fan of The Deliberate Detective (1914; "this book is Bad"), she declares, "you can pry The Great Impersonation from my cold, dead hands."

Murder by Contract (1958).

Proficient hit-man Claude (Vince Edwards) experiences difficulties when he learns about his next assignment: killing a female witness about to testify in a trial.

McFarland's holiday sale.

In a holiday sale, McFarland is offering a 30 percent discount on two or more books ordered from its new true crime and mystery catalog. These include the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series that I edit.

The 39 Steps (1959).

Taina Elg and Kenneth More in The 39 Steps (1959)

In the second film version of The 39 Steps, Kenneth More takes on the role of John Buchan's game-hunter hero who becomes embroiled in espionage.

"As Far as They Had Got" (round-robin mystery, 1911).

"There, in the middle of the upper panel, was the print of a human hand—in blood!"
Arthur Morrison, "As Far as They Had Got" 1911

Long before the Detection Club's round-robin mystery The Floating Admiral (1931), there was "As Far as They Had Got," which appeared in the September 1911 issue of The Strand magazine and included Richard Marsh (The Beetle), Arthur Morrison (Martin Hewitt, Investigator), and spy novel pioneer E. Phillips Oppenheim among its authors. The Strand dubbed it a "Follow-My-Leader Story." Most of the authors provided a footnote that outlined an ending to the story, but they did not have access to these proposed endings as they wrote their particular section.

The story centers on two men out for sail on a river who become ensnared in the aftermath of the Moorgate Street robbery. The story takes a number of twists and turns.

Jennifer (1953).

In Jennifer, estate caretaker Ida Lupino begins to suspect that something nefarious has happened to the previous resident and that local grocer Howard Duff may be involved.

Marie Belloc Lowndes, diarist.

A plot mind, is curiously rare, and does secure for its owner a kind of immortality. By that I mean that long after the writer is dead, the books go on being reprinted.
—Marie Belloc Lowndes

Marie Belloc Lowndes,
ca. 1935

The Diary Review looks at some diary entries of author Marie Belloc Lowndes (1868–1947), including her explanation of the genesis of and reaction to The Lodger (serialized in 1911, published in book form in 1913). Said Lowndes, "When The Lodger was published, I did not receive a single favourable review."

I Wake Up Screaming (1941).

Victor Mature and Betty Grable in I Wake Up Screaming

In I Wake Up Screaming, is Victor Mature guilty of the murder of Carole Landis? Costars include Betty Grable, Laird Cregar, William Gargan, and Alan Mowbray. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Steve Fisher.

Mata Hari exhibition.

Mata Hari. NYPL

The Fries Museum in the Netherlands features its notorious native daughter Margaretha Zelle (aka Mata Hari, 1876–1917) in the exhibition "Mata Hari: The Myth and the Maiden," on view until April 2, 2018.

Sky Murder (1940).

Murders on an airline flight involve fifth-column conspiracies for passenger and detective Nick Carter (Walter Pidgeon). The supporting cast includes Donald Meek, Tom Conway, and Chill Wills.

Exhibition: "Rogues Gallery—Faces of Crime 1870–1917."

The exhibition "Rogues Gallery: Faces of Crime 1870–1917" is on view until December 1 at Edinburgh's General Register House. It provides a look at early Scottish mugshots and related crime documentation, including items pertaining to the real-life counterpart of Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll.

An Act of Murder (1948).

Frederic Marsh and Florence Eldridge in An Act of Murder

When the wife (Florence Eldridge) of a judge (Eldridge's real-life husband Frederic Marsh) is diagnosed with an incurable illness, the judge makes a difficult decision. Costars include Edmond O'Brien and Geraldine Brooks. The film is based on Ernst Lothar's The Mills of God (1935).

Edgar Allan Poe, book reviewer.

In Humanities Magazine, journalist Mark Athitakis examines Edgar Allan Poe's role as harsh book reviewer, although Poe managed to nab a gig reviewing his own works (which, perhaps unsurprisingly, he rated as those of "high genius").

Greene's Across the Bridge (1957).

Based on the short story (1938) by Graham Greene, Across the Bridge features Rod Steiger as an embezzling businessman who seeks to cover his tracks by assuming another man's identity. But as the other man is wanted himself, the businessman's situation becomes much more complicated.

Haycraft on Chesterton.

Howard Haycraft.
From the 1927
Univ of Minnesota
Gopher

In April 1945, H. W. Wilson executive and mystery scholar Howard Haycraft reviewed The Father Brown Omnibus, a new collection of G. K. Chesterton's stories with the mild-mannered clerical sleuth. The review, which appeared in the 31 Aug. 1945 Palestine Post as "Chesterton Tales," discussed the genesis of Father Brown and addressed the question of whether these stories could be classified as detective stories because Father Brown's deductions are often intuitive rather than based on hard evidence. Haycraft's opinion was unequivocal: ". . .[A]t his best Chesterton is indisputably one of that small company of writers most responsible for the curious vitality and appeal of the detective story to modern readers, and Father Brown has been called the best loved of fictional sleuths after the immortal Holmes" (7).

Tread Softly, Stranger (1958).

Diana Dors, ca. 1957

In Tread Softly, Stranger, two brothers (George Baker, Terence Morgan) vie for the affections of a gold digger (Diana Dors) and become involved in robbery and murder. The film is based on the play "Blind Alley" by British playwright Jack Popplewell.

Carolyn Wells's "A Reader's Lament" (1899).

Carolyn Wells,
ca. 1923

Carolyn Wells's The Clue (1909) appears on the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone list of essential mysteries, and she's also known for her Sherlock Holmes pastiches. In addition, she wrote poetry, such as the following "Reader's Lament" (The Bookman, Mar. 1899, p. 22):

I cannot read the old books
I read long years ago;
Eliot, Dickens, Thackeray,
Bulwer and Scott and Poe.
Marryat's yarns of sailor life,
And Hugo's tales of crime; —
I cannot read the old books,
Because I haven't time.

I love the dear old stories,
My thoughts to them will stray;
But still one must keep posted on
The writers of to-day.
My desk is piled with latest books
I'm striving to despatch;
But ere I've finished all of them,
There'll be another batch.

Hope's new one isn't opened yet,
I've not read James's last;
And Howells is so prolific now,
And Crawford writes so fast.
Evelyn Innes I must skim,
O'er Helbeck I must pore;
The Day's Work I'll enjoy, although
I've read the tales before.

And then there is The King's Jackal,
The Gadfly, Caleb West,
Silence, The Forest Lovers, and—
I can't name all the rest.
I'll try to keep up with the times,
But, oh, I hope that I
May read my David Copperfield
Once more before I die.

Jack Benny spoofs The Killers.

Jack Benny and guest star Dan Duryea poked fun at Ernest Hemingway's "The Killers" in "Death across the Lunch Counter," part of the 4 December 1960 episode of The Jack Benny Program.

Mabel Seeley's "What's in a Mystery?" (1940).

Mabel [Hodnefield]
Seeley. From the 1926
Univ of Minnesota
Gopher

Minnesota-born author Mabel Seeley (1903–91; The Listening House, The Chuckling Fingers, The Beckoning Door, The Whistling Shadow, etc.) gave the talk "What's in a Mystery?" at the Minnesota Library Association annual conference in October 1940. A transcript of the meeting's proceedings, including Seeley's often wry presentation that featured excerpts from The Whispering Cup, is in the Minnesota Reflections digital archive (another speaker was Jan Struther, the author of Mrs. Miniver). Seeley noted:

The other night I met a very nice man who had just finished [The] Listening House. He looked me over rather cautiously, first from a distance and then a little closer and finally said, "Well, I wish I had seen you before I read that book—I wouldn't have been half so scared" (5).

She summed up the theme of her talk as "a Mystery Story—what is in it, what you demand of it, and what you may get thrown in on the side as a type of appetizer" (5). She placed mysteries firmly in the category of "escape fiction":

To Tell the Truth: John Creasey.

Only one of the three guests on this 16 Sept. 1963 episode of To Tell the Truth is the real John Creasey, prolific British mystery author.

Clues 35.2 published: Bentley, Charteris, Christie, Hammett, Melville, et al.

Clues 35.2 (2017) has been published; abstracts follow below. In addition to the print version (which can be ordered from McFarland), the issue is available on Kindle,  Google Play, and Nook.

Introduction: In Conversation
Janice M. Allan (University of Salford)
The executive editor of Clues discusses the contents of the issue, including analyses of works by E. C. Bentley, Benjamin Black, Andrea Camilleri, Leslie Charteris, Agatha Christie, Tana French, Dashiell Hammett, and Herman Melville, and the TV series True Detective.

“The Impotence of Human Reason”:
E. C. Bentley’s Trent's Last Case and the Antidetective Text 
Nathan Ashman (University of Surrey)
This article considers the subversion of the analytical detective format in E. C. Bentley’s Trent's Last Case (1913). Exploring the text’s problematization of concepts such as logic and reason as well as its disruption of the detective’s ocularcentric interpretative framework, the author highlights the ways in which Trent’s Last Case unsettles delineations between the classic analytic detective story and the metaphysical or antidetective text.

Watchful Eyes and Smiling Masks in The Maltese Falcon 
Nils Clausson
This article calls attention to the more than 250 references to eyes and their pervasive role in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, arguing that the novel portrays a world in which trying to see past duplicity, dissimulation, and role playing of others, while seeking to hide one’s own, is pervasive.

Labyrinths of Uncertainty:
True Detective and the Metaphysics of Investigation
Paul Sheehan and Lauren Alice (Macquarie University)
This article outlines some of the salient features and ad hoc history of metaphysical detective fiction (MPDF). Using True Detective season 1 as a case study, it explores how the series takes advantage of new programming freedoms to dramatize MPDF for a “broadcast literature” audience.

“A wholly other world of things, hidden”:
Benjamin Black’s and Tana French’s Criminal Worlds 
Kersti Tarien Powell (Saint Joseph's University)
This essay examines the recent success of Irish crime fiction through the works of Tana French and John Banville/Benjamin Black. Whereas the classic detective novel seeks to narrow multiple possibilities down to one determinate solution, French and Black resist this narrative pattern. In so doing, their novels both reclaim and reinvent the Irish literary tradition.

Crime Stories and Urban Fantasy
Stefan Ekman (University of Gothenburg)
Among the many unexplored areas of urban fantasy is its relation to crime fiction. This article explores how features of the crime story are used to emphasize, reinforce, or introduce urban fantasy’s social commentary. It looks at the genres’ relationship, analyzing three urban fantasies and their respective crime fiction elements.

Camilleri’s Montalbano: Aging, Nostalgia, and the Midlife Crisis
Stephen Derek Kolsky (University of Melbourne)
Salvo Montalbano, the protagonist of Andrea Camilleri’s detective series, goes through a midlife crisis that creates a biographical and ideological line of separation between the earlier and later novels, resulting in a new emphasis on the personal in the form of fleeting passionate engagements and less on social commitment.

The Suspect (1944).

In The Suspect (1944), the life of a staid tobacconist (Charles Laughton) is upended when he befriends a young, unemployed woman (Ella Raines), resulting in murder and blackmail. Robert Siodmak (The Spiral Staircase, etc.) directs the film, which was adapted from the novel This Way Out by James Ronald.

Priestley on "An Inspector Calls."

Image of J. B. Priestley. NYPL.

The British Library offers some resources on J. B. Priestley's play "An Inspector Calls," which writer Chris Power calls "a morality play disguised as a detective thriller" in an article on the BL Web site. In 1912, the mysterious Inspector Goole arrives at the home of a wealthy manufacturer, telling the complacent family members that he has questions for them about the suicide of one Eva Smith. The ensuing events alter their lives forever.

• The BL has a "Programme Note" written by Priestley in 1972–74. He explains that he wrote the play in 1944–45; comments on its numerous productions around the world; and mentions the odd fact that no matter the location of the particular production, the audience reaction "was almost always exactly the same." He also notes that the selection of the year of the play's action is significant.

• Power's article discussing the play includes photos and reviews from the 1946 debut production with Ralph Richardson as Inspector Goole and Margaret Leighton as Sheila Birling.

The Case of the Curious Bride (1935).

Erle Stanley Gardner,
ca. 1935

In The Case of the Curious Bride, Margaret Lindsay turns to lawyer Perry Mason (Warren William) after she has committed bigamy, and her first husband (Errol Flynn) ends up dead. The film, adapted from the novel by Erle Stanley Gardner, is directed by Michael Curtiz (spoiler alert for second clip).

More on German detective fiction.

Bruce Campbell, German studies program director and associate professor, at the College of William & Mary, follows up his fall 2016 lecture on the heavy historical legacies of German detective fiction with a September 15 appearance on the radio program With Good Reason. 

 

Criss Cross (1949).

Burt Lancaster and
Yvonne De Carlo in
Criss Cross (1949)

In Criss Cross, Burt Lancaster becomes entangled with his ex-wife (Yvonne De Carlo), her gangster husband (Dan Duryea), and an armored car robbery. Other costars include Stephen McNally, Alan Napier, and Richard Long. The film is directed by Robert Siodmak (The Spiral Staircase).

Interview with Evan Hunter (1994).

1963 ad for 87th Precinct
with Robert Lansing as
Steve Carella

Evan Hunter (aka Ed McBain) was the guest on Connecticut Voices in October 1994 to discuss his book There Was a Little Girl (featuring attorney Matthew Hope). He covers his background in art, the reaction to his novel The Blackboard Jungle and to the start of a new series with Hope, the beginning of the McBain pseudonym, the 87th Precinct novels, and the experience of working with Alfred Hitchcock on The Birds. "Paint the picture for the reader to see . . . with words," says Hunter.

Background to Danger (1943).

In Background to Danger, U.S. agent George Raft seeks to thwart a German plot that aims to mobilize Turkey against Russia during World War II. Costars include Brenda Marshall, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre. Based on the novel by Eric Ambler, the film was directed by Raoul Walsh, with a screenplay by W. R. Burnett (Little Caesar, The Asphalt Jungle, etc.) and some screenwriting help by William Faulkner.

Flubs by Robinson and Bogart.

Edward G. Robinson gets physical in
Bullets or Ballots (1936).

These clips from Warner Brothers blooper reels include appearances by Edward G. Robinson in Bullets or Ballots (1936, with Humphrey Bogart), by Bogart in Key Largo (1947), and by Cary Grant in Arsenic and Old Lace (1944).

Remembering Richard Anderson: "The Purple Room" (1960).

Ad for The Long Hot
Summer (1958)

Most accounts of the Aug 31 death of actor Richard Anderson at age 91 focused on his role as Oscar Goldman in The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, neglecting his numerous appearances on 1950s and 1960s TV. He was Lt. Steve Drumm in Perry Mason (1965-66), Richard Kimball's brother-in-law Leonard Taft in the last episode of The Fugitive (1967), and Fenton Hardy in The Hardy Boys: The Mystery of the Chinese Junk (1967). He also appeared in "The Purple Room," an October 1960 episode of Thriller dealing with a spooky house.

Alafair Burke on the legal system in fiction.

In Why Fiction? in the New England Law Review, Alafair Burke—a law professor at Hofstra University as well as fiction writer—explains why she writes about the law through fiction. As Burke notes:

the work of a novelist depicting our criminal justice system in fiction is not wholly separate from the work of studying the criminal justice system in actuality. Whether an author realizes it or not, it is impossible to create an interesting, albeit fictional, depiction of the criminal justice system, without having something interesting to say about its real-world counterpart. (2)

(thanks to the Law & Humanities blog)

Hidden Fear (1957).

In Hidden Fear, U.S. cop John Payne works in Denmark to clear his sister, who has been charged with murder.

"Iniquity is catching": Frank R. Stockton's The Stories of the Three Burglars (1889).

Frank R. Stockton

Writer Frank R. Stockton (1834–1902) is probably best known for "The Lady, or the Tiger?" (1882). In his The Stories of the Three Burglars (1889) that can be read online at University of Florida's Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature, a lawyer's trap ensnares burglars who tell tales about their lives of crime in the hope that they will be released before the police arrive. One has a proposition for the homeowner:

I wish you to understand the faults of your fastenings, and any information I can give you which will better enable you to protect your house, I shall be glad to give. . . . I have made window fastenings an especial study, and, if you employ me for the purpose, I'll guarantee that I will put your house into a condition which will be absolutely burglar proof. (59–60)

Another seems to be an earlier incarnation of George Plimpton:

"I am frequently called upon to write accounts of burglars and burglaries, and in order thoroughly to understand these people and their methods of action, I determined, as soon as the opportunity should offer itself, to accompany a burglarious expedition. . . ."

Said Aunt Martha,  . . . "I do not think that there is the slightest necessity for people to  know anything about burglars. If people keep talking and reading about diseases they will get them, and if they keep talking and reading about crimes they will find that iniquity is catching, the same as some other things." (108–09)

There is an interesting twist regarding the fates of the three burglars.

Shoot to Kill (1947).

In Shoot to Kill, the charge of murder against a gangster (Douglas Blackley) involves an assistant district attorney (Edmund MacDonald), his wife/secretary (Susan Walters), and a reporter (Russell Wade).

Dragnet, according to Spike Jones.

Spike Jones and His City Slickers perform their own special version of Dragnet in 1953.

The Second Woman (1950).

In The Second Woman, a visiting Betsy Drake begins to suspect that more lies behind the strange accidents happening to architect Robert Young, but others believe he is unbalanced.

Leslie Charteris, Hindenburg passenger.

Mystery authors can show up in remarkable places, and Saint creator Leslie Charteris is no exception. He was a passenger on the Hindenburg for its maiden voyage in 1936. He talks about the trip in this brief clip (and yes, he did wear a monocle in his youth).

Chesterton declines an invitation in verse.

G. K. Chesterton, 1915.
Library of Congress,
Prints and Photos Div.

The Georgetown Library online exhibition "Written Relics: Autographs from the Talbot Collection" provides a March 1921 humorous turn-down in verse handwritten by G. K. Chesterton to what is thought to be students at Saint Louis University: "That I must miss your wheels of fire / Is not my fault at all." Chesterton was on a 3-month U.S. tour at the time (see his book What I Saw in America, 1922).

"Security Risk" (1963).

In this episode for the GE True TV series directed by William Conrad, which also has Jack Webb as narrator and executive producer, an American diplomat in Poland (Charles Aickman) becomes embroiled in espionage.

Exhibition "Spies, Traitors, and Saboteurs."

Pier after the Black Tom Munitions Depot explosion, 
Jersey City, July 1916

Open through Oct 22 at the Chicago History Museum is the exhibition "Spies, Traitors, and Saboteurs: Fear and Freedom in America" that explores events where Americans felt threatened by U.S.-based individuals. The events include the burning of the White House (1814), the blowing up of a Jersey City munitions depot by German agents (30 July 1916), the Oklahoma City bombing (1995), and 9/11.

The Big Steal (1949).

Robert Mitchum, ca. 1948

In The Big Steal, army lieutenant Robert Mitchum pursues Patric Knowles, who has stolen a $300,000 payroll that is Mitchum's responsibility. Jane Greer and William Bendix costar. One of the screenwriters is Daniel Mainwaring (aka Geoffrey Homes, author of Build My Gallows High), who adapted with Gerald Drayson Adams "The Road to Carmichael's" (Saturday Evening Post, Sept. 1942) by western, sci fi, and pulp writer Richard Wormser (1907–77). Wormser offers wry comments about his career (such as the observation that he once wrote 17 novels in 10 months) in How to Become a Complete Nonentity: A Memoir.

"Iconic detectives" exhibition at Ohio State.

On view until September 17 is "Hot on the Trail of Iconic Detectives," an exhibition at Ohio State University's Thompson Library Gallery that features detectives from dime novels, young adult books, comic books, films, and manga. They include Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew, Dick Tracy, Coffin Ed Johnson, and Grave Digger Jones.

• Detective fiction resources related to the exhibition

"Hot on the Trail of Iconic Detectives." Curated by Jennifer
Schnabel, English Librarian, University Libraries, OSU.

Remembering Martin Landau: Johnny Staccato (1959).

The long career of Oscar winner Martin Landau, who died July 15 at age 89, included extensive TV work such as "Murder for Credit," a Sept 1959 episode of Johnny Staccato in which jazz pianist and private detective John Cassavetes (who also directs) looks into the murder of a recording artist (Charles McGraw) who believed he was being poisoned. Landau plays a music arranger who is one of the suspects. Music is provided by noted composer Elmer Bernstein (The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven, True Grit, etc.).

Harry Stephen Keeler's "Magic Coin" (1917).

Illustration from Keeler's "Magic Coin"

The Villanova Digital Library has posted the 1917 Grit publication of Harry Stephen Keeler's "Quilligan and the Magic Coin." Keeler is immortal in mysterydom for creating the flying strangler baby.

The President's Mystery (1936).

Betty Furness, ca. 1936

FDR, an honorary member of the Baker Street Irregulars, proposed an idea for a mystery novel in a conversation with editor Fulton Oursler: "How can a man disappear with $5 million of his own money in negotiable form and not be traced?" As B. V. Lawson discusses, authors teamed up to write the tale for Liberty magazine: S. S. Van Dine, John Erskine, Rupert Hughes, Samuel Hopkins Adams, Rita Weiman, and Anthony Abbot (the mystery alter ego of Oursler). It was subsequently turned into a book and this 1936 film, with proceeds going to the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation. Henry Wilcoxen and Betty Furness costar.

Scene of the Crime (1949).

In Scene of the Crime, police detective Van Johnson looks into the killing of a colleague, encountering an informer (Norman Lloyd) and an entertainer (Gloria DeHaven) along the way.

Remembering James Yaffe: "Dragon in the Den" (1963).

James Yaffe, right, with
Frederic Dannay, 1943.
Library of Congress, Prints
and Photographs Div.

James Yaffe, who sold his first story to EQMM at age 15 and was a longtime English professor at Colorado College, died on June 4 at age 90. One of his characters was Mom, who solves cases for her policeman son over dinner (she appears in A Nice Murder for Mom, Mom Meets Her Maker, and Mom Doth Murder Sleep, as well as in the Crippen and Landru collection My Mother, the Detective). Yaffe's other works include plays ("The Deadly Game"; "Cliffhanger"; "Dear Me, the Sky Is Falling") and screenplays for such TV series as Studio One, the U.S. Steel Hour, and the Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Another of his episodes was "Dragon in the Den" (1963) for the TV series Channing, which features William Shatner as a candidate for state attorney general who discovers there's no such thing as a clean campaign. Costarring are Henry Jones as Channing dean Fred Baker, Jason Evers as a Channing professor, and Denver Pyle as Shatner's campaign manager.

Pulp cover art exhibition in Florida.

Cover of 15 May 1937 Argosy included
in the "In the Shadows" exhibition. Note
contributors include Cornell Woolrich,
Lawrence G. Blochman, and Judson
Philips (aka Hugh Pentecost)

At Florida International University's Wolfsonian until July 9 is the student-curated exhibition "In the Shadows; American Pulp Cover Art." Included are covers from Argosy, Detective Fiction, Detective Novels Magazine, G-Men Detective, and Popular Detective. Wolfsonian chief librarian Frank Luca discusses the exhibition and the students' research aims here.

Remembering Adam West: The Detectives.

Adam West, ca. 1961

Although Adam West, who died June 9 at age 88, is best known for his portrayal of the Caped Crusader, he had a long series of other television appearances. One was his role as Detective Sergeant Steve Nelson in The Detectives, the series starring Robert Taylor as head of a squad of city detectives and featuring writers such as Anthony Boucher and Gene Roddenberry. In "Strangers in the House" (1962), Nelson and his colleagues look into the case of a night watchman run down by a gang of young car thieves. Sharp-eyed viewers will spot Tige Andrews (The Mod Squad), John Karlen (Cagney & Lacey), and Chris Robinson (General Hospital) in the cast.

The first hundred years of detective fiction.

Illustration from Lawrence L.
Lynch, Dangerous Ground (1885)

A valuable resource is the Lilly Library of Indiana University's online version of its 1973 exhibition "The First Hundred Years of Detective Fiction, 1841–1941," which provides a useful history of the genre through the works selected. Besides the expected items by Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, and Arthur Conan Doyle, there are works by lesser known authors such as William Russell (the rare Recollections of a Detective Police Officer, 1856–59) and Lawrence L. Lynch (pseudonym of Emma Murdock Van Deventer, 1885). Other goodies include G. K. Chesterton's sketch of Holmes and Moriarty for a never published version of Conan Doyle's "The Final Problem," a manuscript page from S. S. Van Dine's The Scarab Murder Case (1930), and Georges Simenon's first two novels. Note that the statement "It was not until eleven years later, in 1878, that the first native detective novel appeared in America, Anna Katherine [sic] Green's The Leavenworth Case" is not true, as Metta Fuller Victor is now given this distinction for her novel The Dead Letter (1866).

Out of the Fog (1941).

Ida Lupino and John Garfield in
Out of the Fog

When racketeer John Garfield leans on fishing boat owner Thomas Mitchell and his friend for protection money and romances Mitchell's daughter (Ida Lupino), the men begin to think of murder. The film is based on the play "The Gentle People" by Irwin Shaw (The Young Lions; Rich Man, Poor Man).

Joan Hess on The Painted Queen and Elizabeth Peters.

I talk to Joan Hess in Publishers Weekly about The Painted Queen, the last novel of Elizabeth Peters (aka Barbara Mertz, 1927–2013) completed by Hess after the death of Peters.

Woman in the Window (1944).

Ad for Woman in the Window (1944)

In Woman in the Window, a married professor (Edward G. Robinson) finds himself entangled with a woman (Joan Bennett), blackmail, and murder. Raymond Massey and Dan Duryea costar. Directed by Fritz Lang, the film is adapted by noted journalist-screenwriter Nunnally Johnson from the novel Once Off Guard by J. H. Wallis.

P. D. James companion published.

Just published is P. D. James: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction by Laurel A. Young, vol. 8 in the McFarland Companions to Mystery Fiction series that I edit. Young, who wrote part of her dissertation for Vanderbilt University on P. D. James (1920–2014), teaches English at a high school in Raleigh. The book provides a comprehensive treatment of Baroness James's Adam Dalgleish and Cordelia Gray works, her essays and book reviews, and other aspects of her life such as her admiration for author Anthony Trollope.

A mystery fragment from Mark Twain.

Part of Twain's "A Skeleton Novelette" ms.
Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley

Among the items of the "Mark Twain at Play" exhibition of UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library is "A Skeleton Novelette," a tantalizing 1893 outline in which (according to the Complete Letters of Mark Twain) Twain and editor William Dean Howells proposed that 12 authors write a mystery with the same plot and characters but without knowledge of the other participants' approaches. "There ought to be a murder," Twain wrote. "It ought to be a mysterious murder and the criminal be found out through circumstantial evidence." I am uncertain who wrote the faint inscription "Same old idea" on the paper, but Twain biographer and letter commentator Albert Bigelow Paine seemed equally unimpressed with the idea, writing, "perhaps it was just as well for literature that it was never carried out."

Witness to Murder (1954).

L to R: Gary Merrill, Barbara Stanwyck, George Sanders,
and Harry Shannon in Witness to Murder

In Witness to Murder, Barbara Stanwyck has difficulty convincing police lieutenant Gary Merrill and others that she saw the murder of a neighbor. The screenwriter is Chester Erskine (All My Sons; Angel Face).

99 River Street (1953).

From an ad for 99 River Street.

In 99 River Street, a former boxer (John Payne) is the chief suspect when his unfaithful wife (Peggie Castle) is murdered and must take steps to prove his innocence. Evelyn Keyes and future director Gene Reynolds (M*A*S*H) costar. The screenwriters are Robert Smith (I Walk Alone; Sea Hunt) and George Zuckerman (Under the Gun; Written on the Wind).

Upcoming book on historical murder cases.

McFarland's imprint Exposit Books provides a sneak peek at its upcoming book The Trunk That Dripped Blood: Five Sensational Murder Cases of the Early 20th Century by Mark Grossman. Some of the cases involve Emma LeDoux (1906), priest Hans Schmidt (1913), and dentist Arthur Warren Waite (1916).