Laura (1962).

This German version of Vera Caspary's novel features Anton Walbrook as Waldo Lydecker, Hildegard Knef as Laura Hunt, and John Van Dreelen as Shelby Carpenter.

The fictional detective that inspired Isaac Bashevis Singer.

In the fall 2018 issue of PaknTreger of the Yiddish Book Center, David Mazower, Elissa Sperling, and Michael Yashinsky discuss Yoyne (Jonas) Kreppel's Max Spitzkopf—the "Viennese Sherlock Holmes" that inspired Isaac Bashevis Singer: "These are not just detective stories but tales of Jewish ingenuity featuring an armed Jewish superhero." Kreppel died at Buchenwald in 1940.

The Last Alarm (1940).

Polly Ann Young and
J. Farrell MacDonald in
The Last Alarm

In The Last Alarm, a retired firefighter (J. Farrell MacDonald), his daughter (Polly Ann Young, sister of Loretta Young), and her fiance (Warren Hull) team up to track down the arsonist who has killed the firefighter's best friend.

The Thin Man opens in Canada.

Ad for After the Thin Man (1936)

The Thin Man has opened at Calgary's Vertigo Theatre and will run until October 14. There is an interview with the playwright, Lucia Frangione: "Nick and Nora are surrounded by a gaggle of hilarious and volatile personalities."

The Thin Man is part of a BD&P Mystery Theatre Series that will include Ira Levin's Deathtrap and Might as Well Be Dead: A Nero Wolfe Mystery (adapted by Joseph Goodrich from the novel by Rex Stout).

The Judge (1949).

In The Judge, an attorney feels remorse for the criminals freed by his defense work and seeks revenge on a police psychiatrist, who had an affair with his wife.

Mystery and 19C periodicals.

Vanity Fair cartoon of Wilkie
Collins by Adriano Cecioni,
Feb. 1872

"All the Year Round: Exploring the Nineteenth-Century Periodical," an online exhibition from the University of Otago in New Zealand, includes an 1872 tribute in Vanity Fair to Wilkie Collins for his role in the rise of sensation literature , as well as Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" and The Hound of the Baskervilles from the Strand Magazine (1892, 1902).

The Steel Trap (1952).

Joseph Cotten and Teresa Wright in The Steel Trap

In The Steel Trap, Joseph Cotten steals $1 million from the bank that employs him and is en route to Brazil with his ill-gotten gains when his wife (Teresa Wright) leaves him for his actions. Can he return the money before the bank reopens? This film marks a reunion for Cotten and Wright after Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt.

Conan Doyle and ectoplasm.

Arthur Conan Doyle. NYPL

The Bowery Boys podcast looks at Arthur Conan Doyle's 1922 lectures on ectoplasm, the substance supposedly emitted by mediums during seances. The post states, "Others blamed a series of mysterious murders and suicides in New York City during this time period on Conan Doyle’s disturbing lectures."